This comment made me think....

[rjordan]

What matters is when top notch writers praise the newbs and the journeymen.

When FISTFULLALUV says good job jimbob, I swoon

That's the only kind of comment I pay any real attention to. Two of my favorite top writers have written short notes like that and those I'll never forget.

I also cherish my only green E. Considering the stories Laurel has to go through, having her pause in her day to say, "I like that" meant a lot to me.

In answer to LC68's OP, it might happen that 5 and 1 are far more common than anyone thinks. I mentioned in another post that I give 5* to anything that holds my attention all the way to the voting page, and 5* to anything that gives me a boner at any point in the story. It wouldn't be possible to grade my disinterest from 1-4 so anything else gets no vote.

The voting is nearly meaningless. People score for a lot of reasons so it is worse than just a subjective evaluation of story quality.

rj

 

[legerdemer]

I don't vote if I don't finish a story. If I do, I vote 3, 4 and 5, but have rarely voted 3, unless there are serious problems - completely sloppy grammar, an implausible ending, stuff like that.

I've participated in 3 out of 5 FAWC contests - and I took them at face value. Slyc_Willie did a great job running them and moderating them, and I loved participating.

Perhaps I am naive (I hear the chorus now...) but for the most part,, i agreed with the rankings. You all know better than I that newbie authors are slow to get a reading, not even mentioning votes or comments, and as a newbie it helps to capture the attention of an experienced writer and his/her fan club. So what? We all need to earn our laurels (no pun intended; well, maybe a little).

I absolutely love the idea of hiding the writer's identity until the end of the contest (my RL is full of anonymous peer review) BUT it doesn't guarantee anonymity - authors often (not always) have identifiable writing styles and themes. Plus they can access their fan clubs and point them to their stories (not that anyone would care this much to do this... would they? ). It doesn't seem like it's going to happen.

An independent panel of writers is a good idea as well - and, while both the anonymous posting and independent panel have issues, the combination would give complementary results. Laurel has shown herself responsive to suggestions from writers (eg, April Fool's contest subbing for Earth Day) so I don' take it as a given that she wouldn't be receptive to these suggestions.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

The few times I've watched my scores closely enough to determine the individual votes, it looked like 5,5,4,5,5,5,1,1,5,5,5,1... I've caught the odd person dropping a 2, probably assuming that a 1 will be removed but a 2 might not be.

I don't consider voting worth anything until I see 100 votes, at which point the averages have taken care of anti-fans and the folk who'll put a 5 on anything that got them off.

I've given thought to the ranking system and determined it can't be fixed. Any scheme falls prey to the sock-puppet problem or would require draconian measures that Lit will never introduce. The previously mentioned idea of a review board is a non-starter - you're condemning some group of people to Laurel's hell, reading every single piece of crap that gets posted. You couldn't pay me enough for that job. And even if you could find volunteers, any small group will be sensitive to individual biases, and the scores warp accordingly.

What we have now is near as good as it gets - a vast and random pool of voters, slowly swamping out antifans and other noise. In the handful of stories here I've read, 4.7+ mostly means solid writing and anything below a 4 generally deserves it. 4.0 to 4.7 is a wilderness of things which might be crappy or decent.

I don't believe any vote of 1 is ever meaningful - if it's that bad you wouldn't finish it. A 1 vote is automatically a hater.

I can think of one possible scheme to improve voting.

1. if the vote comes from an anonymous ip, discard it automatically and silently. Vote all you want, nothing changes.

2. If the vote comes from an IP with an established history of voting 5's or 1's, give the vote less weight, and less and less weight over time as the pattern continues.

3. Don't let a vote affect a score until a week after the vote is made.

The idea of 3 is to take away the instant gratification of voting 1 and seeing a score drop. ("Woohoo I got it below 4.5!"). This scheme can still be gamed but at least it would restrict the gaming to people with far too much time on their hands and so much hate in their shrivelled little souls, that they'll probably self-identify and get themselves removed in other ways.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I pay attention to what my readers like, others I don't care about. Its not an original idea. Hugh Hefner did the same, I read an old interview he gave back in the 70s. He said his readers wanted ordinary women who had IT, and he obsessed through piles of photos looking for them. Pros lose THE LOOK with experience and success. Only newbs have it, and theyre uncommon.

Its the same with sex. 99% of women do it the same way they cook or clean or perform at work. And a few are natural born whores who make you remember them forever. They aren't beautiful but your cock is the key that cranks them up, and the show is wonderous. I want THAT in my tales the same as Hefner wanted girls guys don't forget.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Going by definition a 3 means keep writing and 4 is very good(or something like that) so by rights a story between 3-4 should be considered decent, but let's face it, you see a 3.26 your reaction is "That's low"

Yep. I tend to rate stories higher than the guidelines because it seems like everybody else is doing it. I'm sparing with 5s, but I would be reluctant to give a 3 to an OK story, because that makes it look bad. 1s and 2s only for something I really REALLY dislike.

So just curious what others think, when you watch your scores do you see a lot of different scores used or is it a series of five's then a bomb, then more fives?

Mostly 1s, 4s, and 5s; the 1s often vanish in sweeps.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I almost always score something 5 if its a real 4.5 with some dealer prep needed.

Most LIT poems get an automatic ONE BOMB because they aren't poems in any sense of the word. If Emily Dickinson has a point and you don't, it sux to be you. A poem without a point is a brain fart. No points for no points.