I agree with you wholeheartedly. Although I do suspect that some authors have somehow figured a loophole in the current system. I occasionally see a new story on the story side with relatively few reads and a %99 percent rating. This is a nearly impossible accomplishment for it would take almost a hundred positive votes to counter 1 negative and based on the read count that would mean that fifty percent of the readers voted positively. My experience in posting tells me that this never happens and yet I see some stories with these types of accomplishments. It seems a little suspicious to me. The appearance is that the author has somehow figured a way to load their own stories with positive votes although this is just a theory. I have no way to prove it one way or the other.

 

I do agree the voting system is flawed.

the main reason that idea can't work, is because that system is also open to abuse. Just in the same way that negative votes are used to skew results. So "likes" would be too. Its inevitable.

It seem that a lot of writers here just can't get over the fact that people just don't like their story. I absolutely agree that there are some voting trolls around, but there also people with strong opinions about certain subjects. Whose right it is to voice them. Who genuinely dislike the story. And will vote negatively wether its well written or not.

 

I'm not so sure about that. There are methods in place to prevent abuse. Further, we'd want to remove the current 4 votes for a member vs. 1 vote for a non-member. Make everyone's "likes" worth the same.

The main reason why "likes" would be better is that it would stop negative troll voting, which is very disconcerting for a writer. You work 5, 10, 20 hours on a story, post it, get 9 positive votes, and then 1 negative vote by a logged in member, and your story is hit so hard that it never recovers and hardly anyone else reads it. It's not so much that it didn't possibly deserve the negative vote, but, there are members who have publicly stated that they will vote down ANY story that doesn't allow non-members to vote, regardless of the quality of the writing, etc. That's simply being a troll, and shouldn't be tolerated here.

 

This is an example of one of the weird comments I was getting.

cm1r79 Im thankful for the blog post.Much thanks again.



Someone told me it is some type of bot posting.

 

Yes, it is. It's a robot that goes to hundreds/thousands of sites, looking for a way to post while inserting a link back to some website, most likely a blog. Why? Because the person doing it thinks they will get a boost in search engine rankings from this. In most cases, they are wrong, but that doesn't stop idiots from trying.

 

As a writer I have witnessed the down voting. I recently posted a story and monitored the stats. Within a few minutes it recieved 3 negative votes. About 24 hours later the exact same thing happened. Obvious down voting and to me all by the same person. There are ways around the safeguards that try to prevent that.

Having seen that I would have to agree that just using like votes could be skewed the same way.

Given all the recent uproar from some writers with the recent rule change concerning sexually active characters age and the writer's RIGHTS OF FREE SPEECH, why shouldn't a reader have the right to cast a negative vote based on story content?

I would hope most readers just read the tags and if the story is not a subject they care about just move on instead of giving a negative vote without reading the story. I do think they have that right though but just do it once. If a story is not properly tagged leading someone to read a story with a topic they don't care for, I think that would deserve a negative vote.

As a writer if you want to vote negative on any of my stories feel free to do so. I only ask that if you do so leave a comment as to why. It is the only way we learn from whatever mistakes we make. I received a negative vote on my most recent story and a comment the reader thought was boring. For those that read my stories you know they are long and not start to finish sex. I know that does not appeal to all readers here, especially on the stories side. So I think moving forward I will make a statement in the intro that the story is like that so those readers who aren't looking for that don't waste their time.

 

I've had it with this site, it's a hollow shell of its former self.

 

Properly tagging a story is not going to keep people who dislike the content from reading it, because sometimes people want to read things they don't like, and they want to have the negative emotional reaction that comes with that, and then they want to tell you about it. Almost everyone does this in some form or another: People love to complain about terrible movies, TV shows that they hate, songs that drive them crazy etc. There's a certain psychological gratification that comes of critiquing something you dislike. That's how people are wired.

Beyond that, these are the facts of life: If you post stories, they WILL get negative votes. Sometimes a few, sometimes a lot. Not every story you write is going to be popular. Will some people vote unfairly? Probably. If you can think of a way to make life fair, folks will be all ears. In the meantime, it's the price of doing business. Nobody likes it, but the alternative is simply not to publicly express yourself at all.

 

Well, if you're done with it, can I have your rather awesomely named account please? I mean, a name that like doesn't fit well on someone who sodding cries as much as you do after all, does it? :neutral:

 

I hate romantic stories. I have never been turned on by regular porn. But I don't go looking for any stories I consider "vanilla" (not bdsm) and down vote them just because they aren't my cup of tea. If you don't like stories containing rape or bdsm or anything else, don't read them. If you don't think they belong on a website, go support websites that censor their authors.

Voting should be about the quality of writing and pacing of the story. If you don't like the subject matter, don't write a review on it. It's like some critique saying "I HATE ROMANTIC MOVIES SO 50 FIRST DATES WAS TERRIBLE!" it's a useless review. We only want to hear reviews from people who actually like romatic comedies, so we can know if as people who like those time movies, should watch them.

I don't really care regarding my own stories about voting. Finding stories on this site is really hard because of all the dumbass people who downvote a story just because they don't like what is about, not how it is written. Voting should be about how it was written. Voting for any other reason is counter productive and annoying.

 

Most of the writers here are very much okay with people not liking their stories, but that's not what we're talking about. Voice your opinions. We like it when you do, but voting negatively on a story, without reading it, and doing so without commenting as to why, is a different topic altogether. It almost seems like you are in favor of censorship, because your arguments seem to support that more than they do about expressing an opinion. Voting negatively on a story simply because it is a "dark fantasy" story is the same thing as burning a book simply because you do not agree with its content and do not want others to read it. It is the kind of self righteousness that justifies censorship.

This site, for example, now enforces a rule that would disallow writing a love story between two fifteen-year-olds. If a writer wanted to tell a romantic story about two teenagers of that age, his/her story would be deleted, and he would risk being banned. That same writer, however, could write a story where an antagonist takes a knife and slits a fifteen-year-old's throat and buries said teenager in his/her back yard so he/she can gloat over having their corpse so close to them. Sound logical to you? It doesn't to me.

The next time you decide to vote negatively on a story that you haven't read do so knowing that you are in favor of censorship. If you can still push the neg button, then more power to you. I guess.

 

I would also like to add that it is annoying when I hear people downplay the negative voting troll thing that exists on this site. I have opted to stop posting on this site because it is not a small problem. There are not "just a few" voting trolls out there. The voting troll problem on the stories side of the site is so bad that no story, regardless of its content, romance, vanilla, or whatever else you want to call it, remains on the top of the stories side when it is first posted. As soon as it makes it there it stomped on. I am not just referring to stories that I have written. I am not just complaining about my stories. This happens with every single story that is posted regardless of its content. Therefore the only stories that ever remain at the top are the stories of authors who have figured out how to "skate" the system. Because of that the stories that get the most exposure are not necessarily the best stories, and the overall quality of stories is worse off.

 

I agree, but I also think some people read a story they think they shouldn't like, find themselves aroused by a "taboo" topic, and give a negative vote out of guilt or self-loathing.

That's hilarious.

Whiny Little Bitch Of The Forlorn Path. Lol.

 

That's your right, but I don't think it's wise. Look, we can imagine an idiot-proof formula for the number of reads that a story, any story, will receive as follows:


An unpublished story < A low-rated story < A highly rated story


Obviously you want to be as far to the right as possible. So why are you intentionally putting yourself all the way over on the left? You gain nothing by withholding a story, and you lose a very valuable, tangible commodity: readers. However many readers you hope to reach with any story, I imagine it's a number greater than zero. So why are you engineering a zero for yourself?

As I said, it is an unfortunate fact of life that some people will vote unfairly. To be frustrated and disappointed by that is only human. But to sabotage yourself over it affords you nothing. The "trolls" will never notice that you're gone, and if you do in fact have someone around with a specific vendetta against you then they will have won. The only people you hurt by withdrawing are yourself and whoever might have read the story.

The only real safeguard against antagonistic attitudes of some site users is to publish more, not less. Publish as much as you can. If you can write more stories than you are now, do it. If you cannot, then publish those stories you have in every venue that will take them. Publish every single thing you can in every single place you can. It doesn't matter if it proves popular or achieves a high degree of visibility on any one platform; if it does, wonderful for you. If it doesn't, well, it's still more readers than none at all. That's the solution to these problems: write more, publish more. That is how you win. And those are the things that you are under your control.

 

I appreciate your thoughts on this subject, and I guess I understand that I did leave that impression, but I haven't stopped writing. Quite the contrary. I am very fond of this site because its where I found my inspiration to write again after letting go of it for years. I was inspired to write a sexual story after a real life inspiration. I wrote that story, and after writing it I needed to find somewhere to post/publish it. I ended up finding xnxx. I posted that story "Breaking Barriers" and was overwhelmed by the warm response I got from many readers. All in all the story was read by thousands of people, received hundreds of positive votes and many positive comments about the story. I kept writing stories and submitting them to this site. As I went along my ability to write improved and before I knew it I was writing 20 to 30 hours per week.

I have far from stopped submitting stories. I just no longer limit myself to writing erotica and I no longer submit to xnxx (mostly because the stuff I now write is not erotic and the audience at xnxx doesn't seem to appreciate non erotica) (sorry folks but that is true).

I agree with everything you said. It was well put. It just doesn't apply to me. I still write. I still have fans, and I still get that warm fuzzy feeling when someone takes the time to respond to something that I have written. It just doesn't happen on xnxx. (And not under the pen name fingerhut.john)

 

I've posted my stories elsewhere and have gotten way more reads and comments than I ever did here. I stay here for the forum and the CAW these days.

The stories side here is nearly useless.

 

I agree with this statement. Although I cannot boast that I get more readers elsewhere than I did on the stories side of the site. I had a number of stories on this site that garnered over 100,000 nbreads (= 100,000/3 or 33,000 plus readers). So far I haven't gotten nearly that many, but I do get thousands of reads and the stories I write almost never get pegged with bad ratings just for the fuck of it. I like this site, because I got my start here, but there are many readers and or writers that do not respect the craft.

 

I disagree. No place where your story can be visible to at least one new reader is useless. Why would you ever want fewer people to read your story?

 

I said nearly useless, not completely useless. I do still have a few stories posted here.

I had stories here for months that didn't get 25K reads and 5 comments. At another place, the same story has over 100K reads in a little over a month.

 

I understand his frustration on this site. Before I quit posting I was riddled with frustration over the stories side of this site. I got sick and tired of seeing that people were voting negatively on every single story I posted within less than a few minutes of its posting (knowing that many of those stories were ten to even twenty thousand words long and the story hadn't been up long enough to read it yet). I never minded the negative votes that seemed legitimate but it got to the point where many of my stories were being spam negged by people just so the ratings would basement out and less people would get to enjoy them. Most of my stories still fought hard against these attacks and the readers and fans that I had accumulated were able to combat it to some degree but despite my readership I never once had a story stay on the front page for more than a few days. On other sites I fair much better in that regard and I don't have the frustration that the trolls were causing me. My peace of mind is much better off without the stories side of xnxx.