You know, it is really odd. I have some works I think are great, some are hot, some are deep and some miss the mark. No worries. But sometimes I am baffled. I have two stories that are obviously the fan favorites from the likes. I don't get nearly as many comments as I would like but even more is the dislikes. Stories with 400+ likes but have 15-20 dislikes. And nearly all the dislikes are in the first month. I wonder, are other writers "disliking" other writer's stories to get their own to appear higher on the "last 30 days story list?" Seems juvenile but it is all I can figure.

 

Sadly I think that it is part of it. Other things are angry trolls that find it fun to hit negative, and some even do it first thing without ever even reading. Others are most likely genuine responses, but with no negative comments, it's impossible to know why, or to improve your writing.

Recently I had someone downvoting all of my stories for a month straight or more. Maybe it was many people who all of the sudden started reading and disliking my work, Maybe it was one angry person, maybe a bunch of readers who don't like me... Who knows. It is the nature of posting publicly.

 

Some of my stories have fallen five or ten percentage points in the past couple months. These weren't new ones with only a few votes. Some were posted years ago. It took determined negative voting to offset all the positives some of those stories had, but apparently some people have too much time on their hands.

It sucks, but it's nothing new.