Sure is a pity. From what I gather from all the comments, most people must receive great comfort in having other people make their decisions for them, as other people seem to find it empowering to determine reading selections for for the confused majority. Verrry interesting!

After reading the comments and the blog from just-this-guy, I can confirm that Qscore is funny and unreliable as anything else that came before, but then I was expecting it to be nothing else!

I was watching carefully the old and the Qscore and the votes since the announcement. With 770 votes, and old score of 9.58, my Qscore came to be 8.74, and then with two new votes, Qscore moved down to 8.52 while old score stayed the same, and then additional three votes brought the Qscore up to 9.16. Since the Qscore tends to lower the old votes and manipulates the new votes to a lesser degree, I think the latest votes have been at the extreme ends of the spectrum (1s and 2s together with 9s and 10s). So what has changed? Nothing! It’s GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) again!

You know, if Lazeez is going to apply a mathematical model to pull down the scores in relation to some median value, why doesn’t he look at the voting process itself and apply a cut off to votes that differ too much from the median? That is as good as the method he’s using now, if not a superior method, because it would make it more difficult for the trolls and the cheerleaders who vote on the extremes of the spectrum, which is what has caused the inflation of scores as well as all the gripe from many authors, including me.

And like the old scoring system, the new TPA system is being inflated, too. The idea is good, and I have no argument about it, but it doesn’t work, because the implementation is subject to all kinds of abuse that hasn’t been adressed by either system (old or new), which has caused the implementation of Qscore.
.b was right about his assessment and comments on TPA. I’ve checked several of the stories with the TPA scores, and as expected there were numerous technical errors where the story was given a high T score! English is a second language for me, but I’m fluent, and make use of several editors for my own writing to make sure the typos and such are minimal. And if I had to score my own writing on the technical side, I would give it a 7 (or perhaps an 8 if I have to be a bit more generous), and that despite the fact that I receive mail from dedicated readers which list less than 4-5 errors in each chapter (where the lists end up being almost identical). I am also more forgiving when I read some one else’s story which contains more errors, mentally correcting the material (such as replacing their with they’re when the author meant they are), and have more trouble with crappy punctuation. Those technical errors don’t bother me or interrupt my reading as much unless it gets beyond 20-30 errors in a 5-6000 word chapter, and then I throw up the towel. So when I see something with 20 errors in a 2-3000 word long segment, and see it is given a tech score of 9 or 10, it tells me that the system isn’t working.

Some of the commentators said the old system is working! LOL! Right! It’s useless to use as a criteria to find any good reading material. It’s inflated. Qscore is useless, too. It’s just an adjusted value that pulls the old scores down a bit, but in essence, it doesn’t do anything. It’s like when a country has too much inflation, and the money becomes worthless and has too many zeroes (like Italy after World War II). You can take out the extra zeros and instead of a 1,000,000 liret, designate it as 10 liret, but what did you change? Nothing! The inflation is still there!

I think Lazeez should put his thinking cap on and consider the pros and cons of the new system, especially the TPA system, and perhaps do not open it up to the public but a the paying members and authors and such. And he should consider how to address the core issues: how to deal with the votes that fall way beyond the average a story has scored, because that indicates there’s a problem! Pulling the scores down to fit a median is as arbitrary as letting the old score system continue. I think cutting off votes that are extreme is a better solution… maybe it’s not the best, but it certainly is better than what is being allowed to happen!

A few words on the TOP lists. Good changes are implemented. Yes, following up the downloads (for the last 7 days) is a bit of a hassle, and since the latest change it’s almost impossible for many stories (old or new) to make it into the top weekly downloads lists unless they break the 2000 downloads limit! For example, unless the story is a serial with several chapters which averages something less than 1000 downloads per chapter, the story won’t make it into the list except when the author starts posting more frequently to build up the downloads to 2000 figure. Depending on the author, that means he has to write mroe and post more frequently, or cut down the sizes of the chapters to icnrease the number of postings. Personally, I don’t have the time or the inclination to spend more time on writing than I currently can, nor do I want to increase my posting schedule or change the sizes of my chapters. They will be what they are –to my recollection I haven’t posted anything less than 6,000 words as a minimum for a chapter, and sometimes as much as 10-12,000 words, and my last chapter (56) was arbitrarily broken into two segments by SOL submission system, because it exceeded the length limit for a single chapter! But what this change in the system means is that we may end up seeing some adverse effects. Persoanlly, since the change, I began to spend more time checking the daily updates lists and stopped using top lists completely. I used to check the weekly top downloads list to see how a new story was doing, but that is no longer possible and since I don’t rely on scores, I have hardly anything to use to filter stories. Now, it’s back to carefully browsing through the daily updates lists and checking story codes and descriptions!

Maybe Lazeez should increase the TOP lists to include more than 20 stories, because as it is now, we only see the same 25-30 stories dominating the top 20 list!

Dai

I’d also like to see, perhaps just on the author’s page, a list of votes by score, or a percentage of votes by score. For example:

10 30%
9 50%
8 10%
7 5%
6
5
4
3 3%
2 2%

OS

Thanks for holding up a clearer mirror.ajohnson

I don’t know what you expected. Did you thing three tabs instead of one would change who was voting? Those are the readers, the same ones that ran up the other scores on the stories they liked best. No matter what is done to the system, no matter how it is calculated, it is always going to be a popularity contest for the stories.

Voting is open to all, at their whim, with no responsibility except what score they feel like giving at the time. It will always be no more than a slight variation on this same theme.

No significant difference will come of any of it.

This is not a complaint about Lazeez or what he is doing. As far as I’m concerned Lazeez is a Saint. Very few of you realize what he goes through to make his site the best one for this type of work on the internet.

cmsix

I, personally, like to let authors and others know what I like or don’t like about a story without having to send e-mail feedback (that other readers don’t get a chance to see, anyway).

Come on, folks, let’s give this TPA thing a realistic chance so we can see if it works out without sabotage.

Merry Christmas, ajohnson