H
HandsInTheDark
Guest
As I've been posting more and paying attention to votes, I've noticed a pattern in how votes happen on new stories.
Usually a few 5's show up - people who like my style pounce on new stories and usually like what they see. Then, almost always, on the first day, a pair of 1 votes appear - sometimes a 1 and a 2. Then some more 5s, and then the usual slow rain of 5s and 4s begins. By mentally subtracting out the first day's 5's and 1's, I get a feel for how the story is really doing; any average below a 4.5 means that (in my eyes) I messed up. By the time a story has 100 votes or so, I figure the overly-generous and the haters have sunk into the noise and the score is an accurate representation of the story's appeal.
To work out what each individual vote is, you have to catch each vote as it happens, and do the trivial math to uncover what the rating was. I generally don't have time to watch that closely. So to really know a story's appeal I have to wait for that 100 votes. In some genres that can take awhile.
Recently, though, I added a chapter in the Non-Erotica category, the kind of chapter where there's no sex scene to make people react strongly either way. In that kind of chapter a 5 can only mean solid writing and a 1 would mean a complete failure to grasp storytelling - or more realistically, a hater at work. I'm not a bad storyteller; I get lauded more on plot and characters than my sex scenes. So for this chapter, 1 means Hater. I decided to watch the voting more carefully on this chapter.
5,5,5,5,5,1,2,5 was how it started out. True to form, fans, and what appears to be a pair of haters, or maybe a guy and his sock puppet. Then a 4 and some 5's.
I wrote in and asked for a sweep of the hate votes. (In my mind this only removes votes Lit can tell are spurious, by looking at IP addresses or something, but realistically they probably just all delete 1's and maybe 2s.) The story rocketed up into the 4.9s, and kept climbing.
Today I looked in and it had picked up 3 more votes and was in the 4.5s. My 1-voters were back. I asked for cleaning again and now I'm back to 4.9s.
This is absurd. If haters with removed votes can just vote again, and be swept again, and vote again, scores become meaningless.
Maybe there's no real cure for this; because there's no solution to the sockpuppet problem short of imposing draconian controls on site visitors that Literotica is never going to employ.
But it seems to me a few things could be tried.
First, allow authors (or maybe just everyone; why not) to get a list of the actual votes cast, ideally with datetime stamps. That way I can do my own math, deciding on my own if that 2 is really a criticism or just hate. The site can continue to display whatever score it likes; I'm less concerned about that (since I am not interested in contests.) This would be data I'd use for myself.
Next, do weighted averages. A story that gets a lot of 5s, a scattering of 4s and a very few 1s... 1s are outliers and need to be counted as much less than a full vote. There are simple algorithms that handle this kind of thing. Unfortunately, these algorithms only work well after you get a bunch of votes, so they don't help early on.
And maybe: track which IP addresses are dropping a lot of 1's, or targeting particular authors, and block them from the site. This won't stop anyone sophisticated, but since I tend to believe you have to be something of a moron to drop 1s anyway, it might turn back some number of haters. Especially, if haters are authors, and they face the risk of being blocked and being unable to post stories, it might damp any enthusiasm for dropping 1s on what they see as competition.
+++
The Hater phenomena is bizarre. Some of them are probably people who just don't like what you have to say, either in stories or on forum or what have you. (You'd think such people would just block on forums and decline to read some stories, but there are people who just get off on hate and groove to being an anonymous asshole.) Some of it is probably simple competitiveness - how dare you write a better story than me (or my favorite author)! In that sense haters are a badge of honor; if you aren't being 1 bombed you just haven't attracted enough attention yet.
Here's to haters - they simultaneously tell you you've arrived, and manage to confirm their own stupidity (the law of averages eventually makes them meaningless, but they don't learn) and smallness of soul, with every vote.
Usually a few 5's show up - people who like my style pounce on new stories and usually like what they see. Then, almost always, on the first day, a pair of 1 votes appear - sometimes a 1 and a 2. Then some more 5s, and then the usual slow rain of 5s and 4s begins. By mentally subtracting out the first day's 5's and 1's, I get a feel for how the story is really doing; any average below a 4.5 means that (in my eyes) I messed up. By the time a story has 100 votes or so, I figure the overly-generous and the haters have sunk into the noise and the score is an accurate representation of the story's appeal.
To work out what each individual vote is, you have to catch each vote as it happens, and do the trivial math to uncover what the rating was. I generally don't have time to watch that closely. So to really know a story's appeal I have to wait for that 100 votes. In some genres that can take awhile.
Recently, though, I added a chapter in the Non-Erotica category, the kind of chapter where there's no sex scene to make people react strongly either way. In that kind of chapter a 5 can only mean solid writing and a 1 would mean a complete failure to grasp storytelling - or more realistically, a hater at work. I'm not a bad storyteller; I get lauded more on plot and characters than my sex scenes. So for this chapter, 1 means Hater. I decided to watch the voting more carefully on this chapter.
5,5,5,5,5,1,2,5 was how it started out. True to form, fans, and what appears to be a pair of haters, or maybe a guy and his sock puppet. Then a 4 and some 5's.
I wrote in and asked for a sweep of the hate votes. (In my mind this only removes votes Lit can tell are spurious, by looking at IP addresses or something, but realistically they probably just all delete 1's and maybe 2s.) The story rocketed up into the 4.9s, and kept climbing.
Today I looked in and it had picked up 3 more votes and was in the 4.5s. My 1-voters were back. I asked for cleaning again and now I'm back to 4.9s.
This is absurd. If haters with removed votes can just vote again, and be swept again, and vote again, scores become meaningless.
Maybe there's no real cure for this; because there's no solution to the sockpuppet problem short of imposing draconian controls on site visitors that Literotica is never going to employ.
But it seems to me a few things could be tried.
First, allow authors (or maybe just everyone; why not) to get a list of the actual votes cast, ideally with datetime stamps. That way I can do my own math, deciding on my own if that 2 is really a criticism or just hate. The site can continue to display whatever score it likes; I'm less concerned about that (since I am not interested in contests.) This would be data I'd use for myself.
Next, do weighted averages. A story that gets a lot of 5s, a scattering of 4s and a very few 1s... 1s are outliers and need to be counted as much less than a full vote. There are simple algorithms that handle this kind of thing. Unfortunately, these algorithms only work well after you get a bunch of votes, so they don't help early on.
And maybe: track which IP addresses are dropping a lot of 1's, or targeting particular authors, and block them from the site. This won't stop anyone sophisticated, but since I tend to believe you have to be something of a moron to drop 1s anyway, it might turn back some number of haters. Especially, if haters are authors, and they face the risk of being blocked and being unable to post stories, it might damp any enthusiasm for dropping 1s on what they see as competition.
+++
The Hater phenomena is bizarre. Some of them are probably people who just don't like what you have to say, either in stories or on forum or what have you. (You'd think such people would just block on forums and decline to read some stories, but there are people who just get off on hate and groove to being an anonymous asshole.) Some of it is probably simple competitiveness - how dare you write a better story than me (or my favorite author)! In that sense haters are a badge of honor; if you aren't being 1 bombed you just haven't attracted enough attention yet.
Here's to haters - they simultaneously tell you you've arrived, and manage to confirm their own stupidity (the law of averages eventually makes them meaningless, but they don't learn) and smallness of soul, with every vote.
)
