The Red H Debate (yeah, i know, AGAIN)

[Smuttyandfun]

One value I haven’t seen mentioned here—the red-H provides a quick method for potential readers to determine if they might elect to pursue an author’s work based on the quality of their story scoring. I rarely read a story before I’ve reviewed the author’s bio page and story list. When I click on their story list, if it’s “littered” with red-H’s across 50 stories, it piques my interest more than an author with zero across 100 stories (“LW only” stories not withstanding).

Lowering the red-H to 4.0 or eliminating it would lesson that value for me as a reader.

I've done the same. If I like a story, I'll check the author's bio. If I see mostly red H's, I'll probably read a few more of their stories and favorite them as an author, too.

 

[MillieDynamite]

If you limit yourself to 4.5 and higher stories, you are a populist. You follow the crowd. You'll never discover that quirky writer that speaks to you because their work may never get above the 4.2 - 4.49 range. That's cool you can go through all of your life only reading, watching, eating, or wearing what everyone else tells you is good. Why have a mind of your own when the herd can guide you?

I like to decide what I like for myself.

 

[Bamagan]

If you limit yourself to 4.5 and higher stories, you are a populist. You follow the crowd. You'll never discover that quirky writer that speaks to you because their work may never get above the 4.2 - 4.49 range. That's cool you can go through all of your life only reading, watching, eating, or wearing what everyone else tells you is good. Why have a mind of your own when the herd can guide you?

I like to decide what I like for myself.

"I'm an individualist, just like all the other individualists I admire!"

 

[MillieDynamite]

Why so much convoluted mathematical BS? The end result isn't more indicative of the quality of the story. Voting is a highly person thing. One person's opinion at a time. Why read more into one vote than another? Why average their story to their average?

What's that about? What secret does it let us in on?

All you do is make voting more important than the story. I want to write, see some nice comments, some awful ones, and once in a while, see someone favorited my story. I don't want to have to ponder why the score is the score. If it gets that complicated, I'll turn the fucking voting off because it becomes meaningless to me at that point.

I stand ready to take those cannonballs to the face but here goes…

- drop the Red H. This makes the numerical average even more important.
- make the average score more meaningful by:
- forcing the use of handles to do a star rating (can feel those fuses burning down, so close to detonation. )
- track each reader’s vote distribution (no, it won’t be gaussian but that doesn’t matter)
- do not use their raw vote when applying it to the story’s average
- weight their rating. If, for a given story, it’s dead-on their average - use that
- for deviations from their (weighted) average, adjust the rating that gets pumped into the story’s average (someone with statistician chops needed here to set this up and get the magnitudes correct for the adjustments)

This means less ratings overall. Yet, just as there’s no magical significance to the H and its equivalence to 4.5, neither is there significance to today’s average number of ratings or the ‘rate of ratings.’ They are just numbers.

For honest raters (logged-in readers), this would be very powerful, allowing them to save their 5-ratings for truly remarkable work and have that glowing rating really impact the story’s average (If their 5 is statistically well-off their average - their average ideally being bestowed upon work that they view as truly average).

Folks who (generously) only bestow 5s** are a quandary since they really aren’t ‘rating’ the story, other than in an up/down sense. My not-deeply-considered opinion is that their 5 should be adjusted to the story’s current rating (which isn’t insignificant - as doing so further anchors a story at that current number - lending inertia to the current rating at the moment that our generous rater bestows their 5).

In the case of trolls and other nefarious schemers, it would allow the site to take countermeasures, precise ones I suspect - things/ways I’ve not imagined. I can imagine various scenarios. A person who has a 1.something mean rating could keep dropping those 1-bombs all day, but the site could simply not use them as a matter of policy. Or whatever. The point is, the data is plainly there…

**This kind of tracking (or rater’s average) became necessary in [the Service I was in] because of rampant grade-inflation on annual performance reports. Virtually everyone was a waterwalker, a future FO/GO, making the job of promotion boards a nightmare. An honest commander, rating his officers, could single-handedly destroy careers. It was untenable. But, sure, was nice to get that report, the near-meaningless pat on the head. Anyways, it got (mostly) fixed.

So I’m saying the fix to what ails us is out there. I doubt it’s even all that terribly complex.

I know this suggestion isn’t going to land. If you read this far, hey, thanks!
But this topic keeps coming up so it’s y’alls’ fault - you got me to overthink it.

 

[lovecraft68]

I like to decide what I like for myself.

My reading method(when I have time) is simple
Going to whatever category I'm in the mood for and then looking for a title and tag line that grab me. I never look at score.

 

[lovecraft68]

Whether a story is hot or not is subjective and varies from one reader to another. My idea of a good story is something someone else thinks sucks and...we're both entitled to feel as we do,

The "H" here is not meant to be hot necessarily in the sense of "Damn, that was hot!" but in the sense of having a high score which makes it Hot in the same way a team on a 10 game winning streak is hot. It represents a certain benchmark score. the erotic hotness of it...go back to my first point.

I'm tired of hearing how it should be dropped to a four or eliminated completely because that's just more watered down, everyone gets a participation award BS that this society pushes. People used to be competitive, they used to set goals, they used to want to attain something, to prove something.

Now its "wahhhh" they have something I don't and I want it to, but I don't want to earn it, so...if I can't have it, neither can they.

Someone in this thread mentioned getting rid of negative votes. Yay, everyone gets a 5!! Good job getting up today, everyone!

People with no fire to excel and rise above just want everyone to be down on their level because it makes them feel better about themselves.

That's what this really comes down to.

 

[Djmac1031]

Wanna thank everyone for being civil during this conversation. So far, anyway .

They're not gonna change the rating system. Certainly not because of my post.

The reason I brought this up yet again was seeing yet another newer author here despairing over scores and fretting about possible one bombs and the loss of a Red H instead of being happy their story was still a high 4 and had lots of supportive readers.

And I also fully acknowledge my own light hearted hypocrisy.

I have a new story posting tomorrow.

I'll be very happy if it achieves a Red H, I won't lie about that.

But not because I get yet another little digital marker tagged to my story, but because whatever audience finds it is letting me know they liked it.

That said, I would seriously be happier to get a thousand votes and my story rated a low 4 than get that Red H with only 20 - 30 readers.

 

[Djmac1031]

I'm tired of hearing how it should be dropped to a four

I get your point. But I did also suggest raising the amount of votes needed to get the Red H to balance dropping it to a 4.

Just a reminder

 

[MillieDynamite]

I put a new story (new for here) in the cue today. Cue or queue? Anyway, it sold well. Hopefully, it'll be something a few people find entertaining here. I've been remiss in getting new work up here. I'm working on an outline for short work for the Crime and Punishment event. I hope I can get some mileage going on writing it this weekend. It's a second Theodora Drummond story. I haven't determined the when of the story. I think it's before the novella, The Case of the Richman's Wife, but I am not positive yet.

Of course, my hope is lots of s and nice comments. I wouldn't kick a 4.5+ to the curb for getting crumbs on the floorboards, but it isn't expected.

 

[Bamagan]

It would be an interesting experiment to see if readers of a site like this would be responsive to a kind of badge system. By that I mean, the site would offer them an up/down/neutral vote for their overall reaction, but they could also click on a small number of other things like "too short/too long/just right," "too fetishy/wanted more hucows," "too realistic/too unbelievable," "interesting spin/too derivative," or whatever. Presenting more than a handful of such options would likely be pointless, since few vote anyway, and you'd probably want to tailor them to each category. Again, not advocating for this, just wondering if it could help bridge the knowledge gap of authors wanting to know why they only get likes instead of love and feeling diminished because of it.

 

[ElectricBlue]

One value I haven’t seen mentioned here—the red-H provides a quick method for potential readers to determine if they might elect to pursue an author’s work based on the quality of their story scoring. I rarely read a story before I’ve reviewed the author’s bio page and story list. When I click on their story list, if it’s “littered” with red-H’s across 50 stories, it piques my interest more than an author with zero across 100 stories (“LW only” stories not withstanding).

Lowering the red-H to 4.0 or eliminating it would lessen that value for me as a reader.

Gee look, a reader. Let's see what they've got to say on all this.

Look at that. A reader finds the Red H useful and gives the reason why. I wonder how many other readers feel the same way? Thousands, tens of thousands, probably.

 

[FifthEstate]

If you limit yourself to 4.5 and higher stories, you are a populist. You follow the crowd. You'll never discover that quirky writer that speaks to you because their work may never get above the 4.2 - 4.49 range. That's cool you can go through all of your life only reading, watching, eating, or wearing what everyone else tells you is good. Why have a mind of your own when the herd can guide you?

I like to decide what I like for myself.

I said a red-H littered story list piques my interest, but it’s certainly not the only way I find stories or authors. Of the 10 stories on my favorites list, only 4 are 4.5 or above. Two of my favorite authors j267 and thecryptkeeper don’t even allow scoring.

But if I’m not familiar with an authors work, I’m more likely to dig deeper initially if they have the red goods.

The other thing I notice is the red-H is often rewarded to stories with quality grammar, spelling etc. in addition to an interesting story arc. I personally dislike reading stories with grammatical land mines at every turn. Now I am not saying that stories with a 4.2 rating possess those issues, but in my experience, many above 4.5 do not.

 

[Djmac1031]

Gee look, a reader. Let's see what they've got to say on all this.

Look at that. A reader finds the Red H useful and gives the reason why. I wonder how many other readers feel the same way? Thousands, tens of thousands, probably.

For the record; I'm not saying the Red H as it stands doesn't have it's uses.

If I'm checking out an author and I click on their story list, sure, I'll probably gravitate to the ones listed Red H first.

Because that's a good place to start to see if I like their style.

Doesn't mean I won't read something rated under 4.5 later though.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Just for perspective, I have 11 stories with 4.5 or higher rankings—three with 4.4 to 4.9 scores, seven between 4.0 and 4.39, and five that are below 4.0. Of those below 4.0, only one was truly my story. I wrote the others for someone from an outline they provided, and those written for others were all cuckold or cheating stories.

And I still prefer the 40 hearts on the 4.4 ranked She’s a Bully to the 4.75 rating and only four hearts on Mollies Rapturous Embrace.

And I didn't put links on them because I'm not pushing myself as an author. Just saying what I prefer.

 

[dasgoodshit]

Bro, I actually think that there are too many "hot" stories. Imo, it should be harder to get that red H.

If your story gets 10K Views and 100 votes to reach a 4 or higher, I think that's a pretty damn solid accomplishment.

And now readers aren't looking at the Red H to judge a story worthy and, writers are no longer seeing a story with less than a 4.5 as somehow either a failure, or a personal attack on them.

Different categories have different numbers of readers, so what you're proposing requires a shifting line in the sand for what's "hot" nor "not."

And One Bombing Trolls would do a lot less damage if the Red H stood at 4.

They would just bomb more. It doesn't matter where the line is drawn.

Two stories have 100 votes.
One has a score of 4.51
The other, a score of 4.49.

What's the difference between the two of them besides that Red H?

Two stories have 100 votes.
One has a score of 4.01
The other, a score of 3.99.

What's the difference between the two of them?

 

[MillieDynamite]

0.01

Two stories have 100 votes.
One has a score of 4.01
The other, a score of 3.99.

What's the difference between the two of them?

 

[Djmac1031]

Bro, I actually think that there are too many "hot" stories. Imo, it should be harder to get that red H.

I agree. Which I why I also suggested raising the vote requirement.

 

[dasgoodshit]

0.01

As long as we're being silly, it's actually .02.

 

[MillieDynamite]

As long as we're being silly, it's actually .02.

Your right missed the .01 on the other one.

 

[Bamagan]

For next April 1, I suggest they randomly assign a letter and color to every story on the site. I'll bring the popcorn!

(They're always after me Lucky Charms! - Laurel's Lament)

 

[dasgoodshit]

I agree. Which I why I also suggested raising the vote requirement.

Yeah, I guess you did, but that's going to be a lot of work to determine what is hot in each of the 30+ categories

 

[Djmac1031]

Yeah, I guess you did, but that's going to be a lot of work to determine what is hot in each of the 30+ categories

Any more work than it is now?

 

[MillieDynamite]

The math I worry about is how much money is in our account and how much do we need to pay our bills if we have excess, all good. If it's a deficit, I better find some dough to spread around. I get what your saying, but I'm here for the writing, not so much the voting.

Hi Millie!
I suspect that - in the grander sense - we fully agree with one another. The grander sense being that the current system isn’t likely to change, and that the real wisdom is to not let any of this (averages, Hs) get to us — just keep at it.
I’m fully on board.

In my too-long offering, I was knowingly looking past all that, toying with the premise that there’s a problem (debatable all on its own), one that could be solved (also debatable) and, if so, how might that be approached. For those of us who rather enjoy a mathematical challenge, there’s something here to chew on.

No offense intended. Truce?
All the best to you, V

 

[Smuttyandfun]

For the record; I'm not saying the Red H as it stands doesn't have it's uses.

If I'm checking out an author and I click on their story list, sure, I'll probably gravitate to the ones listed Red H first.

Because that's a good place to start to see if I like their style.

Doesn't mean I won't read something rated under 4.5 later though.

I do the same thing. If I check out an author, I often look at their highest rated stories first. If someone has a story at 4.90 and another one that's 4.20, I'll look at the higher one first. If I really like the way they write, I'll probably check out the other one, too.

 

[Bamagan]

Any more work than it is now?

Hot things generally expand, so yes, thanks to inflation, it's probably about 2% more difficult year-to-year, although recently it's been a bit higher.