Vote distribution

[only_more_so]

Is there anyway to know if your story has been 1-bombed? It seems like every time a story of mine goes public, the first 5-6 votes are 5's. Then I check some hours later and suddenly I have 12 or so votes, but the average drops to 4.6 or so. I did some quick math on my latest story, and either I got a single one and the rest fives, or I've gotten 2/3 fives and 1/3 fours (or something in between).

Anyway, I would be interested to know the sort of vote distribution my stories get. Even if it were just a histogram to get an idea of the distribution.

 

[Weird Harold]

I did some quick math on my latest story, and either I got a single one and the rest fives, or I've gotten 2/3 fives and 1/3 fours (or something in between).

Anyway, I would be interested to know the sort of vote distribution my stories get. Even if it were just a histogram to get an idea of the distribution.

From just a casual, occassional, watch on the top lists, I'd guess that your story got Ten fives, a one, and a Five -- The eleventh vote is almost always a One because there are a million reasons for not wanting a perfect score at the top of the list.

I agree that a histogram or summary of the last few votes could be useful information, except with Lit's 1-5 ratings there are actually very few votes that are in the middle -- a single one vote is far more likely than multiple four votes; people seem to vote Five, One or Abstain.

 

[only_more_so]

From just a casual, occassional, watch on the top lists, I'd guess that your story got Ten fives, a one, and a Five -- The eleventh vote is almost always a One because there are a million reasons for not wanting a perfect score at the top of the list.

I agree that a histogram or summary of the last few votes could be useful information, except with Lit's 1-5 ratings there are actually very few votes that are in the middle -- a single one vote is far more likely than multiple four votes; people seem to vote Five, One or Abstain.

I sometimes wonder why Lit doesn't go to some sort of estimator instead of a raw average vote. IMDb, for instance, uses a Bayesian estimator to adjust small samples towards the overall mean.

Weighted Answer = (v ÷ (v+m)) × R + (m ÷ (v+m)) × C
v - # of votes for the story
m - # minimum number of votes to be included in the ranking
R - The rating of the story
C - The average of all ratings (on stories that qualify)

As v becomes very very large, the estimator tends toward the average rating of the story. If v is comparable to m, then part of the vote comes from the story and the rest from the average story. This makes it impossible for a story with only a few votes to jump to the top of the list. It would also discourage the public service of giving a story a 1 vote to knock it off the top list until it gets an adequate number of votes.

 

[Weird Harold]

I sometimes wonder why Lit doesn't go to some sort of estimator instead of a raw average vote.

Simple answer: it costs money and server time to program an implement such a system and in the long run all it does is group stories scores closer together.

If Lit allowed ratings on a wider scale than 1-5 it might be worthwhile, but with the sacel tey use, it would just add a few more stories to the "H" classifiction.