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How about a 10 point scoring system rather than 5?

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biggym
Active Ink Slinger
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The 5 point system is still the best way to rate the stories. Some member can't figure out the 5 point system, the 10 points will just confuse them.
Meggsy
Active Ink Slinger
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The vote value to me is immaterial - it is the comment I want to see.
I have occasionally seen a vote given without a comment (usually less than 5) and that to me is worthless.
I dont normally vote when I leave a comment.
sdsioux
Advanced Wordsmith
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From now on I'm only going to give a 5 to the very best stories.
"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance that principle is contempt prior to investigation."
Herbert Spencer
Unknown User
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Quote by Meggsy
The vote value to me is immaterial - it is the comment I want to see.
I have occasionally seen a vote given without a comment (usually less than 5) and that to me is worthless.
I dont normally vote when I leave a comment.


I largely agree save that I do normally vote since I know some people value it.

However, that all changes with a comp entry where the votes actually matter. I can't see making a comment on a comp entry and not voting when my not voting could hurt the story's chances.
LYFBUZ
Troublemaker
0 likes
The problem isn't the range of 1 - 5, the problem is we refer to these as "scores." Very confusing, I have not scored even once because of a story I wrote.. Very misleading.

Henceforth, we should refer to the 'scores' as "Canucks." 1 Canuck, 2 Canucks, etc. I know you're smiling.
curvygalore
Bonnet Flaunter
0 likes
Quote by LYFBUZ
The problem isn't the range of 1 - 5, the problem is we refer to these as "scores." Very confusing, I have not scored even once because of a story I wrote.. Very misleading.

Henceforth, we should refer to the 'scores' as "Canucks." 1 Canuck, 2 Canucks, etc. I know you're smiling.


You score every time with me, sexy Canuck. Hang on, do those two words actually go together, like ever? *runs*
fuzzy1954
Whistling on my journey
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Quote by LYFBUZ
The problem isn't the range of 1 - 5, the problem is we refer to these as "scores." Very confusing, I have not scored even once because of a story I wrote.. Very misleading.

Henceforth, we should refer to the 'scores' as "Canucks." 1 Canuck, 2 Canucks, etc. I know you're smiling.



Always pushing the "Canadian Way" of scoring

My latest two micros

Party Dreams

https://www.lushstories.com/stories/flash-erotica/party-dreams

Jane's Need

https://www.lushstories.com/stories/flash-erotica/janes-need

sdsioux
Advanced Wordsmith
0 likes
I spoke to someone who said anything less than a 5 was a slap in the face. Does that answer the question about the rating system?
"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance that principle is contempt prior to investigation."
Herbert Spencer
Liz
Scarlet Seductress
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Quote by sdsioux
I spoke to someone who said anything less than a 5 was a slap in the face. Does that answer the question about the rating system?


It answers a question about the person who said it.
angieseroticpen
Story Verifier
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Quote by Buz
How about we leave it as it is? Changing it seems like a big hairy fucking mess. And l don't think there is anything wrong with the current system.

If it were changed, a mass of writing members will be screaming bloody murder about how their dozens to hundreds of stories' scores adjust to the new system.



I agree.
“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”
fuzzy1954
Whistling on my journey
0 likes
How is this?
"Don't try and reinvent the wheel"

Just a guy that never gets a huge read and comments in Lush.
Write from your soul and you will feed your soul.

My latest two micros

Party Dreams

https://www.lushstories.com/stories/flash-erotica/party-dreams

Jane's Need

https://www.lushstories.com/stories/flash-erotica/janes-need

Plungertool
Active Ink Slinger
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Overdue, more subtle and nuanced
sdsioux
Advanced Wordsmith
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Quote by Liz


It answers a question about the person who said it.


And a lot of people feel that way about 5*. There are trolls on lit who give you a 1 to bring your rating down
"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance that principle is contempt prior to investigation."
Herbert Spencer
sprite
Her Royal Spriteness
0 likes
fact: no matter what scoring system we have put in place, people are going to bitch about it. i see two solutions. 1) leave the current system in place. 2) do away with scoring altogether. personally, i like #2. expect some changes in the next few weeks.

You can’t truly call yourself peaceful unless you are capable of violence. If you’re not capable of violence, you’re not peaceful. You’re harmless.

LYFBUZ
Troublemaker
0 likes
Quote by sprite
fact: no matter what scoring system we have put in place, people are going to bitch about it. i see two solutions. 1) leave the current system in place. 2) do away with scoring altogether. personally, i like #2. expect some changes in the next few weeks.


If there's no scoring how the hell am I going to punish you with "1"s?
trinket
Convict
0 likes
Quote by sprite
fact: no matter what scoring system we have put in place, people are going to bitch about it. i see two solutions. 1) leave the current system in place. 2) do away with scoring altogether. personally, i like #2. expect some changes in the next few weeks.


Nooooooooooooooooooooooo! I love the crappy scoring system we have.
nicola
Matriarch
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Quote by Milik_the_Red
With the enormous drop off in recorded views we have seen as more and more readers use the mobile site, it is insanely difficult to reach the 25K famous story level now, let alone a 100k legendary peak. A change like this will only punctuate that new works have little or no chance of equalling these posted before the changes.


I can confirm this is not true.

Traffic on the desktop site has remained around the same level since we made the switch over to the new mobile platform.

On the mobile site, we've actually seen quite a drop in traffic as a result of the change. It seems that quite a percentage of people preferred the no frills read only mobile site. That's probably where you're seeing the dip in views. It's not from more people using the mobile site.

When we first started, we had a simple thumb up or thumb down option. It didn't work.

No other site we researched uses a 1-10. It would be almost impossible to implement that now considering 55,000 stories have been voted on using a 1-5.

We tried allowing anonymous voting. It was abused, particularly during competitions.

The scoring will remain the same for the foreseeable future.
Milik_the_Red
Internet Philosopher
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Quote by nicola


I can confirm this is not true.

Traffic on the desktop site has remained around the same level since we made the switch over to the new mobile platform.

On the mobile site, we've actually seen quite a drop in traffic as a result of the change. It seems that quite a percentage of people preferred the no frills read only mobile site. That's probably where you're seeing the dip in views. It's not from more people using the mobile site.

When we first started, we had a simple thumb up or thumb down option. It didn't work.

No other site we researched uses a 1-10. It would be almost impossible to implement that now considering 55,000 stories have been voted on using a 1-5.

We tried allowing anonymous voting. It was abused, particularly during competitions.

The scoring will remain the same for the foreseeable future.


I saw that you had mentioned in another post a short while ago that Lush maintains the third highest level of hits of any adult literature site. Considering that would be a world wide stat, it’s actually pretty amazing. For myself, knowing people are reading is all I need. Tracking it is just a side vanity and doesn’t really matter anyway. I’m glad you made that clear.

I’m also glad the scoring won’t be changed. If we made a radical change every time a thread was started Gav would probably throw his hands up in frustration
RejectReality
Testing The Waters.
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One of the big 3 ( SOL ) does use 10 point scoring.

There's virtually no difference in the scoring distribution. So much so, in fact, that the site runner implemented a complicated weighing system that virtually nobody understands just to make the visible scores spread out more. Raw scores have actually been hidden, because only Einsteins could make sense of the difference between the two numbers.

They even tried an optional split scoring system dividing up technical, plot/characters, and enjoyment for a while. Because the majority of the scores cast under that system were the same across all categories offered, it was eventually dropped.

It's the same no matter what system you use. Most people won't vote at all, even when given the option to do so anonymously. Those who do tend to be on the extremes. Either they loved it and give the max score, hate it and give the minimum score, or are jackasses trying to game the system by giving the lowest score they think won't be removed as fraudulent.

Likewise, no matter what scoring ( or contest judging ) system you have in place, a large segment of authors will believe it unfairly disadvantages them.

Yep. Just leave well enough alone. Lush can boast the highest vote to comment ratio of all the big three. A comment, no matter how simple, is of more value than a click of a score.

Quote by nicola


I can confirm this is not true.

Traffic on the desktop site has remained around the same level since we made the switch over to the new mobile platform.

On the mobile site, we've actually seen quite a drop in traffic as a result of the change. It seems that quite a percentage of people preferred the no frills read only mobile site. That's probably where you're seeing the dip in views. It's not from more people using the mobile site.

When we first started, we had a simple thumb up or thumb down option. It didn't work.

No other site we researched uses a 1-10. It would be almost impossible to implement that now considering 55,000 stories have been voted on using a 1-5.

We tried allowing anonymous voting. It was abused, particularly during competitions.

The scoring will remain the same for the foreseeable future.
Unknown User
0 likes
Quote by nicola


I can confirm this is not true.

Traffic on the desktop site has remained around the same level since we made the switch over to the new mobile platform.

On the mobile site, we've actually seen quite a drop in traffic as a result of the change. It seems that quite a percentage of people preferred the no frills read only mobile site. That's probably where you're seeing the dip in views. It's not from more people using the mobile site.

When we first started, we had a simple thumb up or thumb down option. It didn't work.

No other site we researched uses a 1-10. It would be almost impossible to implement that now considering 55,000 stories have been voted on using a 1-5.

We tried allowing anonymous voting. It was abused, particularly during competitions.

The scoring will remain the same for the foreseeable future.



No like button on the forums (hint hint) but I'll quote this and .
sdsioux
Advanced Wordsmith
0 likes
I got a response to a story that I gave a 4 rating to and the response was "you win you learn." A 4 rating is good. Does that mean that anything short of 5 is a failure? I really think something needs to be done.
"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance that principle is contempt prior to investigation."
Herbert Spencer
RejectReality
Testing The Waters.
0 likes
As it stands, any vote that drops the score below a perfect 5 seriously impacts its future readership. It doesn't have any immediate effect, but the lions share of views coming from readers who didn't discover you through another story already are coming in from the "most popular" and "most viewed" lists — and disproportionately from the top half of the first page of those lists, which more or less means a perfect 5 is required.

Though it does seem to me that there's been an attitude shift within a large enough segment of the readership away from "all or nothing" voting to begin to chip away at that. Time will tell whether it has an impact on those two critical lists, moving the 5 boundary closer to the top of page 1.

If I'm right about that trend, and it has the expected impact, the problem has already been solved, and will just take time to erode away the all or nothing wall. If scores less than 5 land more frequently in that sweet spot, the impact of a "4 bomb" will become less of a heart-wrenching experience.

At which point, everyone will move on to dirges about "3 bombs".

Quote by sdsioux
I got a response to a story that I gave a 4 rating to and the response was "you win you learn." A 4 rating is good. Does that mean that anything short of 5 is a failure? I really think something needs to be done.
WannabeWordsmith
Writius Eroticus
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Quote by Milik_the_Red
We also have some 55k stories already scored using the old system... how does that affect those already there?


Programmatically it's easy. Lock the site for a short while, double everyone's votes value in the database and roll out the 'out-of-10' scoring widgets and graphs. Sure, there won't be any odd numbers for the current stories, but that won't disadvantage them.

Like any system, the problem is the voting system itself. Readers aren't necessarily voting on the story quality but how it made them feel, and this won't change regardless if it's out of 5, 10 or 100. It's the same problem that plagues Amazon when people vote products with a '1' because it didn't arrive on time or was damaged in transit. It's a product vote not a service vote but the two are so intertwined that the result from the customer perspective is that prompt delivery and finding it's exactly what they ordered = a good score.

Same here on Lush. I've had people vote 1, 2, or 3 because they hated my story content as it wasn't for them. Nothing to do with how well written it was (which is what the score is about), it just didn't catch their imagination or they didn't like the ending. Nothing can be done to combat that, regardless of how many it's scored out of unless we change to a 'star' system that reflects how the story made the reader feel.

Honestly, we are one of - if not the - highest quality adult literature sites on the Internet due to our fantastic moderating team and the high standards we set and try to maintain. If any story warrants a 1 or 2 for its well-writtenness(!), we're not doing our jobs properly and it should not have been published. Thus, any such score is usually a visceral or personal reaction rather than a technical one.

Please browse my digital bookshelf. In this collection, you can find 104 full stories, 10 micro-stories, and 2 poems with the following features:


* 29 Editor's Picks, 70 Recommended Reads.
* 15 competition podium places, 9 other times in the top ten.
* 21 collaborations.
* A whole heap of often filthy, tense, hot sex.

Milik_the_Red
Internet Philosopher
0 likes
Quote by WannabeWordsmith



Honestly, we are one of - if not the - highest quality adult literature sites on the Internet due to our fantastic moderating team and the high standards we set and try to maintain. If any story warrants a 1 or 2 for its well-writtenness(!), we're not doing our jobs properly and it should not have been published. Thus, any such score is usually a visceral or personal reaction rather than a technical one.



I agree with this and actually made a similar point when I was a mod.
KimmiBeGood
Simple Scribbler
0 likes
Personally, I equate 1-5 with F-A school grading. I wish a comment was required with a 1 or 2 (F or D) in my head. I would just like to know why I received the low rating. Going to 10 doesn't seem worth the trouble to this writer.
sdsioux
Advanced Wordsmith
0 likes
Quote by KimmiBeGood
Personally, I equate 1-5 with F-A school grading. I wish a comment was required with a 1 or 2 (F or D) in my head. I would just like to know why I received the low rating. Going to 10 doesn't seem worth the trouble to this writer.


I agree that the F-A is the same as a 1-5 system. I've commented twice now on giving 4 or B ratings and now have two enemies. Twice because I decided to only give 5 ratings to the very best stories, the ones that were well written. I'm thinking about not voting anymore and just keep my mouth shut, that way I can read and enjoy the stories. With this system and the way people think I would have failed high school and college because I was a B student with very few A's and C's. I can see that my opinion is going nowhere fast and on this site it is all 5's or it's a failure.
"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance that principle is contempt prior to investigation."
Herbert Spencer
WannabeWordsmith
Writius Eroticus
0 likes
Quote by sdsioux
on this site it is all 5's or it's a failure.


It is a shame that some people think this way about their stories. Statistically speaking, it's impossible to please everyone all the time or the bell curve would be skewed high. Even successful thriller writers like Lee Child are subject to personal taste and can easily go out of favour with their fan base, despite a story being the same high standard as previous offerings. People just sometimes go "meh" because one particular story doesn't resonate or match their worldview, while others love it.

I have no problem with people that drop "low" scores on my stories and are honest enough to say why. As long as it's not out of spite/spam, it's great. In fact, if someone has such a negative reaction to something I write, it's likely because it was so well written it struck a nerve, which perversely makes me happy.

The Lush score really means very little due to the high standard of writing we maintain. I know my stories are technically good because I work damn hard to make sure they are. A bunch of people might love them for what they are - technically and artistically. Some don't enjoy the content, but I'm comfortable enough with my writing that I know the 1s and 2s are as much a testament to the fact I did a good job making a realistic story as the 4s and 5s are at massaging my ego.

The comments are what matters.

Please browse my digital bookshelf. In this collection, you can find 104 full stories, 10 micro-stories, and 2 poems with the following features:


* 29 Editor's Picks, 70 Recommended Reads.
* 15 competition podium places, 9 other times in the top ten.
* 21 collaborations.
* A whole heap of often filthy, tense, hot sex.

Guest
Lurker
0 likes
Quote by KimmiBeGood
Personally, I equate 1-5 with F-A school grading. I wish a comment was required with a 1 or 2 (F or D) in my head. I would just like to know why I received the low rating. Going to 10 doesn't seem worth the trouble to this writer.


Bingo
AbigailThornton
Orgasm Aficionado
0 likes
Quote by naughtyannie
How about a system where my stories just have a 5 option, and all the others have 1-4? That couldn't be too hard, surely? ?????


You just gave me my first laugh of the day :-)