The magic four point five

[robertreams]

Well, here's my take: a 4.5 is a 90%. Translated that means that the average of those readers who chose to make the effort to give a rating, gave you 90%. That is not bad. What sucks is that one individual who decides to trash you can kill you rating and you would never know it. So, I take pride in my H's, but I also take pride in my other stories, which some people like and some don't. Also, in poetry, there are no H's, but I do pretty well in there, too (but with many, many fewer views.) I can honestly say that the only negative comments I have ever received have been from those whose opinion I do not cherish. Example: "Your story is too far fetched to be true": but true nonetheless. or: "To say that an 18 yr old has never seen an uncut penis is ridiculous." But in my 70 years, in locker rooms and having shared sex and nudity with hundreds of people in the U.S., I have only seen one other(not counting porn sites). So, folks, those who rate your stories are READERS. Be happy you have them, but don't live by them or consider them all experts.

 

[BuckRivers]

Does anyone else get paranoid about the scoring patterns?

I love getting feedback, so when I post a story I obsessively check it out over the next week to see how it's faring. One pattern I often see is that a story will start out with good scores and then in the first ten or twenty votes someone will crater it with a 1 or 2 rating. Then it'll climb back up. I always look suspiciously at the other high-rated authors in that category wondering if someone is knocking down high-rated stories just to keep their own work at the top of the list.

Of course, it's certainly possible that someone just opened the story and hated it, but it's weird that it seems to happen fairly regularly and fairly quickly after being posted and then the story bounces back. I'll also see a pattern later in the voting sometimes where a story suddenly drops a fair bit in a short time, and in a couple of cases I got relatively high-rated stories pounded until they had a rating of 4.49. Maybe it's just a coincidence, though.

Does anyone else notice stuff like this, or am I just a conspiracy theorist?

 

[RejectReality]

Keep in mind that at 10 votes, your score becomes visible. If that score is above 4.5, the Red H appears, putting a big red sign post on your story.

Early on -- especially in low-read categories -- people who are already following you are the most likely to be the first out of the gate, and they'll score high.

Low scores could indeed be jealous authors, but don't count out their fans, either. I've found that unless told not to, a lot of fans love to "help" their favorites by blasting everyone else.

The added visibility after 10 votes, attaining an "H", or registering a high score can also draw readers who may end up not liking your story, or liking but not loving it, resulting in a 4. If your score is above 4.0, every 4 vote drops it.

It can also attract people who liked it, but feel the score is too high, and think it's their duty to correct it with a low score so the average better reflects the score they think it should have. I've seen people admit to that on the forum many times over the years.

And there are people who will blast you with low scores just to be dicks.

 

[HuckPilgrim]

Keep in mind that at 10 votes, your score becomes visible. If that score is above 4.5, the Red H appears, putting a big red sign post on your story.

Early on -- especially in low-read categories -- people who are already following you are the most likely to be the first out of the gate, and they'll score high.

Low scores could indeed be jealous authors, but don't count out their fans, either. I've found that unless told not to, a lot of fans love to "help" their favorites by blasting everyone else.

The added visibility after 10 votes, attaining an "H", or registering a high score can also draw readers who may end up not liking your story, or liking but not loving it, resulting in a 4. If your score is above 4.0, every 4 vote drops it.

It can also attract people who liked it, but feel the score is too high, and think it's their duty to correct it with a low score so the average better reflects the score they think it should have. I've seen people admit to that on the forum many times over the years.

And there are people who will blast you with low scores just to be dicks.

Yup.

tl/dr: griefers!

 

[legerdemer]

Random

Some of it is, in my opinion, random. A while ago I did an inadvertent experiment: I started with one account, and posted three stories that got a nice but not spectacular reception ( 4.2<x<4.5 ),though one of them built up to the pat-on-the-back red H. After some months I deleted the stories from that account, and eventually started another account and posted two of the same stories and another couple. The two stories that I reposted never went up to the same level they had reached earlier, and I think that's because, by luck of the draw, the early voters voted lower the second time around. That in turn probably influenced later voters. I eventually deleted that account as well, and won't repost the stories to continue the experiment. I have not posted enough to build up any sort of following, so my samples are readers who ran across my stuff randomly, not come-backs, so to speak.

But I wonder if that's one reason why some authors might give themselves a 5 early on - to set a trend.

 

[RejectReality]

Did you get any "I've read this before" or "You stole this" comments?

Reposts are notorious for being blasted with low scores unless labeled as such on the first line of page 1.

Some of it is, in my opinion, random. A while ago I did an inadvertent experiment: I started with one account, and posted three stories that got a nice but not spectacular reception ( 4.2<x<4.5 ),though one of them built up to the pat-on-the-back red H. After some months I deleted the stories from that account, and eventually started another account and posted two of the same stories and another couple. The two stories that I reposted never went up to the same level they had reached earlier, and I think that's because, by luck of the draw, the early voters voted lower the second time around. That in turn probably influenced later voters. I eventually deleted that account as well, and won't repost the stories to continue the experiment. I have not posted enough to build up any sort of following, so my samples are readers who ran across my stuff randomly, not come-backs, so to speak.

But I wonder if that's one reason why some authors might give themselves a 5 early on - to set a trend.

 

[slyc_willie]

Keep in mind that at 10 votes, your score becomes visible. If that score is above 4.5, the Red H appears, putting a big red sign post on your story.

Early on -- especially in low-read categories -- people who are already following you are the most likely to be the first out of the gate, and they'll score high.

Low scores could indeed be jealous authors, but don't count out their fans, either. I've found that unless told not to, a lot of fans love to "help" their favorites by blasting everyone else.

The added visibility after 10 votes, attaining an "H", or registering a high score can also draw readers who may end up not liking your story, or liking but not loving it, resulting in a 4. If your score is above 4.0, every 4 vote drops it.

It can also attract people who liked it, but feel the score is too high, and think it's their duty to correct it with a low score so the average better reflects the score they think it should have. I've seen people admit to that on the forum many times over the years.

And there are people who will blast you with low scores just to be dicks.

My latest just posted this morning, and as of just a few minutes ago, is sitting at 4.50 with 6 votes. So I'll be interested to see what happens once the score becomes visible.

 

[lovecraft68]

Some of it is, in my opinion, random. A while ago I did an inadvertent experiment: I started with one account, and posted three stories that got a nice but not spectacular reception ( 4.2<x<4.5 ),though one of them built up to the pat-on-the-back red H. After some months I deleted the stories from that account, and eventually started another account and posted two of the same stories and another couple. The two stories that I reposted never went up to the same level they had reached earlier, and I think that's because, by luck of the draw, the early voters voted lower the second time around. That in turn probably influenced later voters. I eventually deleted that account as well, and won't repost the stories to continue the experiment. I have not posted enough to build up any sort of following, so my samples are readers who ran across my stuff randomly, not come-backs, so to speak.

But I wonder if that's one reason why some authors might give themselves a 5 early on - to set a trend.

Scores here remind me of ebay auctions. You can sell the same item at different times and get far more money on one auction than the other.

Comes down to who is looking and when

 

[legerdemer]

Did you get any "I've read this before" or "You stole this" comments?

Reposts are notorious for being blasted with low scores unless labeled as such on the first line of page 1.

RR, I did not, because really very few people "knew" me before (or since). The stories had 5-10K reads in all, not a lot by Lit standards.

LC, I couldn't agree more.

 

[LesLumens]

My latest just posted this morning, and as of just a few minutes ago, is sitting at 4.50 with 6 votes. So I'll be interested to see what happens once the score becomes visible.

I finally put chapter 1 of something I've had 3/4 done for 2 frikkin' years in the queue this morning. *laugh*

The second half of the story was always the problem, and I figured out that it was the need for some time to pass between the halves. That didn't feel like a chapter to chapter transition, so the second half of the story is going to be a multi-chapter Part 2 eventually.

The nice thing is I have about 20k+ words of material ready to go. I just need to transition into it

It's going to be an experiment in the E&V category, because it's not the traditional "fucking in public and getting seen" that dominates there.

 

[slyc_willie]

I finally put chapter 1 of something I've had 3/4 done for 2 frikkin' years in the queue this morning. *laugh*

The second half of the story was always the problem, and I figured out that it was the need for some time to pass between the halves. That didn't feel like a chapter to chapter transition, so the second half of the story is going to be a multi-chapter Part 2 eventually.

The nice thing is I have about 20k+ words of material ready to go. I just need to transition into it

It's going to be an experiment in the E&V category, because it's not the traditional "fucking in public and getting seen" that dominates there.

E&V can be a tricky category. I've noticed that there are the readers who want the story to develop into something completely implausible (two people fucking in the woods get caught, and it turns into an orgy for the Mother Goddess or something) and those who enjoy the nuances. I think what made my Earth Day story last year go over so well was that it bridged the gap between them. It was plausible to an extent, but fantastic at the same time.

Keep truckin', Dark.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I'm a new writer of erotic fiction; 2 stories published on Literotica, and a third one pending. So my level of experience is not great.

With that said, here are a few observations.

Literotica is an erotic literature site. Some people come here for lengthy, well written stories with lots of character development and a dash of sex; but (I suspect) most don't. Most are looking for quick whack off material that plays to their particular fantasy. Those people won't read lengthy stories, because it's not what they're looking for at the moment. Given that they're not reading lengthy stories, they're also not voting on them; they've moved on long before they've reached the bottom.

Conclusion? Lengthy pieces of well written literature may have higher scores, because only the people who read to the end, vote; and the only reason they got that far, was because they were enjoying the read. But those stories may have fewer readers that actually read to the end.

The Hot flag is something I strive for, even though I recognize that it's a very flawed rating system. The reason I strive for it is, it's pretty much the only reward for writing erotic fiction.

(And there's a helluva market for someone with experience in selling erotic fiction, to write a book entitled 'how to sell erotic fiction'. Who buys it? What do they pay? How do you attract their attention? The hard nuts and bolts, not the vacuous generalities. I want company names, addresses, pay schedules... every scrap of detail necessary to move from the 'unpaid' category, to the 'paid' category.)

Finally, when I wrote the second installment of my series, the scores on my first installment took a jump up. I suspect that what happened is that I attracted new readers with the second story, who then went back to the first story, read it, and gave it a high vote. That wouldn't have happened in reverse; if I'd written a poor second installment I would have got lower vote scores on that story, but few would have gone back, read the first one, and down voted it as well.

Conclusion? Sequential series stories on the same theme will keep an existing audience, while picking up new readers as well. Those new readers will then go back and read the earlier installments, and vote them up; and this will have the effect of raising the scores of earlier written stories in the same series.

(However, I'm not sure this works when you change genres; people looking for 'group sex' stories will not read 'incest' or bondage stories from the same author. Well written they may be, but they're not playing to the particular fantasy of the original audience, so they don't get read... at least, not by that particular fan base. They may create a new fan base, and there might be some cross pollination as well... people interested in both genres.)

And at the end of the day, we should also remember that there are virtually no authors on Literotica with less experience than me. So if someone disagrees with my conclusions, pay attention; for they're probably right.

LIT is McErotica

 

[RejectReality]

I love the thing, so it doesn't really matter if it tanks or languishes. That's why I fretted over it turning out how I wanted it to so much

I've also got two other sites where I post, and typically when something doesn't do particularly well on one, it does on one or more of the others.

E&V can be a tricky category. I've noticed that there are the readers who want the story to develop into something completely implausible (two people fucking in the woods get caught, and it turns into an orgy for the Mother Goddess or something) and those who enjoy the nuances. I think what made my Earth Day story last year go over so well was that it bridged the gap between them. It was plausible to an extent, but fantastic at the same time.

Keep truckin', Dark.

 

[slyc_willie]

I love the thing, so it doesn't really matter if it tanks or languishes. That's why I fretted over it turning out how I wanted it to so much

Well, we write for ourselves, first and foremost, right?

I've also got two other sites where I post, and typically when something doesn't do particularly well on one, it does on one or more of the others.

I only post on one other site, and it's not an erotica site, so I really don't have a comparison there. But on the other site, there's much more constructive feedback, which ultimately helps in the areas where I still need help.

 

[SandraMustard]

I think the surge of low votes early in a stories life cycle is due to its presence in the "New Story" category. I think the trolls troll that category because it is a gateway (all stories appear there). I've had comments that are obviously from LW trolls that speak of cheating wives and cuckold husbands even though the story might be about swingers and slotted for the Group Sex category.