Why readers don't vote

[LargoKitt]

I was just looking over my poems noticing that most don't have enough votes to tip into the hot category. Now I'm not saying they deserve to be called hot. I'm puzzling why the vast majority of Lit readers don't vote. I was figuring that for stories it was because they skim, see it isn't their favorite, and move on before getting to the last page. But poems are one-pagers. So I'm looking at a poem that got more than 6500 views and 8 votes. The voters pretty much liked it. Okay. But why did 6500 people say 'Can't be bothered' and why is that the norm?

 

[anthrodisiac]

I suspect a lot of people don't realize they can vote if they're not logged in (that was me for a long-ass time, back before I had an account). I'd wager the majority of people don't have accounts. Some of those views are probably bots. A lot of people click on something, realize they don't like it, then back out rather than rate it, as you mentioned. But even for a short work, they might just get a few lines in before they come to that realization, and wouldn't you rather they not rate it if it wasn't to their taste than give it a 1 for not being "their thing"?

Could be that poetry is one of those things where it's not just about the content, but the style, and rather than say they didn't like it because of the style or the content, they prefer not to drag down the score because it didn't fit their personal tastes.

All speculation, really we have no idea. The reasons for any one person doing it are their own, and it isn't going to be the same as the next person, nor the person after that. It's a whole slew of reasons that result in low view/vote ratios.

Some categories have much higher view/vote ratios than others for whatever reason. Mine tends toward the lower end of engagement because non-human is a massive category filled with dozens of niches and specific kinks, and mine is only one group of that, so most people who click in aren't into anthros, they might like monsters or vamps or aliens or slimes or whatever, so they back out. I'd rather those people not give me a 1 for not being their preferred type of non-human. Still, it'd be nice to get more engagement, but thems the breaks.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

In the world of publishing, readers typically take the time to rate/score/review a story based upon:

1. Investment. Was there a cost to read it? Since readers here don't invest anything other than their time, did the story provide them with a recognized value for the time they dedicated to it? Loyalty to an author is an emotional investment.
2. Engagement. Did they finish the story or drop off part way through it?
3. Intrinsicness. Did the story feel essential to them or something that they could relate to?

On a free story site with the diversity of material and quality of writing, the typical motivations for readers to rate/score/review are tougher to pin down as applicable.

For example, there is evidence that with stories published in pieces, the scores drop after the first few episodes. Is this due to a perceived lower investment, a loss of engagement, or wavering intrinsic value for the readers?

Other factors, such as not requiring readers to make the small investment of having an account in order to read stories might also be contributing factors.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

For the most part, voters are lazy. I think that's the biggest reason. And it's mot intended as a knock on readers. A lot of the writers here are pretty lazy too. And even that's okay. It's a hobby site.

 

[alohadave]

For example, there is evidence that with stories published in pieces, the scores drop after the first few episodes. Is this due to a perceived lower investment, a loss of engagement, or wavering intrinsic value for the readers?

This phenomenon is not unique to Lit. It happens to all content, in every form. It's pretty much a universal law.

Chaptered stories, book series, web serials, album releases, TV shows, movie franchises all exhibit this.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

It's my impression that poems get read by fewer people than stories, so even if the same percentage of people vote, you'll see fewer Hot icons.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

This phenomenon is not unique to Lit. It happens to all content, in every form. It's pretty much a universal law.

Chaptered stories, book series, web serials, album releases, TV shows, movie franchises all exhibit this.

True. People require motivation in many aspects of life.

 

[NotWise]

There isn't much motivation for readers to vote. Whatever they get out of voting is entirely internal.

 

[old_prof]

I've been reposting some of my stories on a variety of other sites recently. The one I think I'm mostly going to stay with posting on (I'm actually writing a new story for there right now), gives me maybe hundreds of reads where I got thousands here. Less than 10% of what I get here. But I get comparable amounts of feedback. Not a comparable rate, but a comparable total. So immensely more engagement per reader.

It is focused on longer pieces than Lit does. And it's not erotica focused, although it does not ban the kinds that I write either. I have not moved any of my raunchier stuff over, either. But N&N has amongst the best rate of feedback of any category here. Which is good because it's definitely in the lower tiers of readership. I suspect the greater investment in reading a longer piece increases the engagement, for people who do read it.

That site also only allows reading the first roughly 5K words of a story without an account. So they are somewhere between Lit and most sites that require an account to read.

I will say that they also give better mechanisms for feedback and much better analytics to the authors than happens here.

 

[Voboy]

I was a reader here for nearly a decade before I became a writer. In that time I read thousands of stories. I never signed up, never got a username, never voted on a story, and never commented on a story.

It just never occurred to me.

OP, I just don't think a lot of readers realize that voting and commenting matters. I didn't.

 

[GuiltyCowboy]

Another piece of pure speculation: people are more inclined to share their judgement of a work when it’s either really good or really bad - and most of the writing here falls between those two extremes.

There’s good work of mouth and bad word of mouth but no medium word of mouth. Medium word of mouth is, in effect, no word of mouth.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Why readers don't vote​

They didn’t cum.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

They didn’t cum.

What if it's a story about orgasm denial?

 

[subdudeme13]

They didn’t cum.

It is hard (not that kind of hard) to give a negative review. I always try to be positive and relate my happy experience.

 

[Writer61]

I was just looking over my poems noticing that most don't have enough votes to tip into the hot category. Now I'm not saying they deserve to be called hot. I'm puzzling why the vast majority of Lit readers don't vote. I was figuring that for stories it was because they skim, see it isn't their favorite, and move on before getting to the last page. But poems are one-pagers. So I'm looking at a poem that got more than 6500 views and 8 votes. The voters pretty much liked it. Okay. But why did 6500 people say 'Can't be bothered' and why is that the norm?

Plenty of sites require an account to vote, and that is usually too much for me, as I don't want to deal with another source of spam.

 

[anthrodisiac]

They didn’t cum.

Actually, they did cum, couldn't be arsed to read the last twenty words, and went to go smoke a ciggy.

 

[LargoKitt]

In the world of publishing, readers typically take the time to rate/score/review a story based upon:

1. Investment. Was there a cost to read it? Since readers here don't invest anything other than their time, did the story provide them with a recognized value for the time they dedicated to it? Loyalty to an author is an emotional investment.
2. Engagement. Did they finish the story or drop off part way through it?
3. Intrinsicness. Did the story feel essential to them or something that they could relate to?

On a free story site with the diversity of material and quality of writing, the typical motivations for readers to rate/score/review are tougher to pin down as applicable.

For example, there is evidence that with stories published in pieces, the scores drop after the first few episodes. Is this due to a perceived lower investment, a loss of engagement, or wavering intrinsic value for the readers?

Other factors, such as not requiring readers to make the small investment of having an account in order to read stories might also be contributing factors.

I see a curious difference from the 'tapering off'. In my series the first chapter gets a lot of views but votes just below the hot level. Then succeeding episodes can rank very hot. This may happen because my chapters are usually episodic and can stand alone. Even in my Daughter of Lilith series, though my succubus is developing, a chapter can stand alone.

 

[LargoKitt]

It's my impression that poems get read by fewer people than stories, so even if the same percentage of people vote, you'll see fewer Hot icons.

I expect that. It's true of poetry in general and most people don't open a poetry book thinking, "I wonder if this will get me hot?" (Though lots of poetry evokes intimacy and, new fact for me, Shakespeare made his reputation writing Venus and Adonis, a narrative poem that was his first published work and pretty much considered smut in his day. But my note was that lots of people read my poem. Thousands. But I could count the votes on one hand. That does go for stories. My most popular Old Fisherman and the Babysitter story has 150k views and a few hundred votes.

 

[LargoKitt]

When I eat out (the culinary kind) I always leave a tip. Don't you? Damn, now it's built in even when you're getting takeout. Real easy to punch a star at the end of the story. Even if you hands are a mess.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

When I eat out (the culinary kind) I always leave a tip.

To this point, when you eat out, do you base your tip amount on the beverage served before the meal?

I think most people would base their tip on the total experience, including the soup/salad appetizer, the entree, and possibly the dessert. This should be something for writers to consider when they publish their works in pieces rather than as a whole completed work. Don't expect a 20% tip on each course of the "meal".

On the rare occasion when I do read a story here that is published in parts, I always vote only at the end, after completing the whole story.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

I see a curious difference from the 'tapering off'. In my series the first chapter gets a lot of views but votes just below the hot level. Then succeeding episodes can rank very hot. This may happen because my chapters are usually episodic and can stand alone. Even in my Daughter of Lilith series, though my succubus is developing, a chapter can stand alone.

Sure. It's the number of votes that tapers off (for most people, not for my last chaptered posting). The people still reading for Part 6 are there because they like the story, after all.

 

[SmilingLez]

I was just looking over my poems noticing that most don't have enough votes to tip into the hot category. Now I'm not saying they deserve to be called hot. I'm puzzling why the vast majority of Lit readers don't vote. I was figuring that for stories it was because they skim, see it isn't their favorite, and move on before getting to the last page. But poems are one-pagers. So I'm looking at a poem that got more than 6500 views and 8 votes. The voters pretty much liked it. Okay. But why did 6500 people say 'Can't be bothered' and why is that the norm?

If I can't give five stars, I do not rate. YMMV

 

[old_prof]

To this point, when you eat out, do you base your tip amount on the beverage served before the meal?

I think most people would base their tip on the total experience, including the soup/salad appetizer, the entree, and possibly the dessert. This should be something for writers to consider when they publish their works in pieces rather than as a whole completed work. Don't expect a 20% tip on each course of the "meal".

On the rare occasion when I do read a story here that is published in parts, I always vote only at the end, after completing the whole story.

I find that I tend to vote on the first chapter and the last, relatively consistently, only voting on exceptional chapters in the middle.

As an author of a chaptered piece, you can see how well each chapter works by how many people stay to read the next chapter. I think subsequent chapter views are much more realistic than views on single pieces here. People mostly know what they're getting in chapter x, so are much less likely to click out after looking at the length or the pages or the author's note or the seventeen typos in the first paragraph.

You can see how well the

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I find that I tend to vote on the first chapter and the last, relatively consistently, only voting on exceptional chapters in the middle.

As an author of a chaptered piece, you can see how well each chapter works by how many people stay to read the next chapter. I think subsequent chapter views are much more realistic than views on single pieces here. People mostly know what they're getting in chapter x, so are much less likely to click out after looking at the length or the pages or the author's note or the seventeen typos in the first paragraph.

You can see how well the

I deleted all my chapters and replaced them with single submissions exclusively three years ago, but if I go back and check my stats from then, there was always a 20% to 40% drop in views from the first chapter to the second, with the remaining chapters staying withing 5% of the second chapter thereafter. The ratings per chapter remained consistent, but the average for every one of these stories increased by at least .01 when they became single submissions.

The views-per-day for all the stories also increased once they were single submissions, with the votes-per-view ratio increasing significantly for all four of the stories.

Your results may vary.

 

[SimonDoom]

For the most part, voters are lazy. I think that's the biggest reason. And it's mot intended as a knock on readers. A lot of the writers here are pretty lazy too. And even that's okay. It's a hobby site.

I think this more or less is the right answer.

Literotica is designed to make it very easy to read a story. Stories are easy to find, easy to open, easy to read, easy to close. To most readers, it probably doesn't occur to them to vote. They don't even think about it. They have no sense of belonging to or investment in the site or the authors. They're just here for some quick erotic pleasure.

I read stories for over 10 years here before becoming an author. It never occurred to me that I "should" do anything, other than read the stories I wanted. It's been a long time since those days and I don't specifically recall, but I'm sure I voted much less than half the time. Most of the time I didn't even think about it.