While I agree with many of the comments made by others here – e.g keep the money, I really do not agree with killing TPA. It’s the only one I use (both for scoring ad working out whether I want to read something). Additionally I dislike the idea of not being llowed to turn on/ off scoring. Would it be possible to allow this once? I can easily see a case for not allowing it multiple times, but not at all seems draconian.

Anyway, thanks once again.

I do like the ratings system but don’t rate a story I may have begun reading and abandoned due to content, ie: pedo, zoo, etc. because the content nauseates me. I realize I may be prejudiced against the content and don’t vote because I would award the story a one or a two which isn’t fair to the author.

When choosing a story to read I don’t even look at the ratings whether it be TPA, bScore or number of downloads. Instead I start reading it and if it grabs me within a few paragraphs then I continue. If it doesn’t then I do not. Pretty much the same way I read a book.

As for the money, saved for hardware updates and new author tools such as suggested by Von.

Thanks.

As an author or editor, I get infuriated when I see a crazy score smack down a wonderfully high score, but the overall placement remains still. Yes, although I acknowledge that scores are affected by both fans and curmudgeons, after reading a story I rarely judge the scores to have been far enough off the mark to fool me. TPA is helpful to me as a reader and I leave TPA scores on 90% of the stories I read.

I like TPA voting and would be sorry to see it go. The problem with TPA voting is the same as the problem with the original voting system: uninformed and negligent votes. Can TPA voting be limited to authors only? Or perhaps to premium members only? I think that would help with some of the problems.

Take the monies and work out a deal with one of the better editor programs (I like stylewriter) where and author could have a discount on the product (After they have posted to whatever level you decide to set to be eligible).

It helps them write better stories which has more people paying to be a member of the site which gets you more cash to have to figure out how to spend. Everyone wins.

You pay out the top x number of stories. There are stories on SOL I would happily pay for, and others which are good, but not necessarily what I would pay for. Hence I would separate payment from scores.

I’m at SOL largely because of the author tools in place, broken or otherwise. Like turning scoring on or off. I like to leave scoring off until a story nears the end. I’m not doing it to generate higher scores, but in the hopes of generating a more accurate score. Judge the story when it’s finished, that’s the whole point. Short fiction is scored at the end of the story, obviously, so why should novels be any different?

Like I say, scoring on or off and the ability to change my mind is one of the things I like, but if it has to change… I’d suggest scoring remain off for all stories until a chapter is posted with the “Story is Complete” option selected, at which time scoring is turned on. Finish the book, get a score isn’t a radical concept. I don’t think those (one?) of us who like that policy should be punished for it. I turned on scoring for Vazquez with the posting of the last chapter yesterday, and just now I turned on scoring for Brendan as it will conclude tomorrow.

I will point out that I generally leave scoring off on stories of a certain type (like TG, cheating, snuff) until after they’ve disappeared from SOL’s front page because I believe 1 voting clowns are too lazy to search more than a couple pages deep looking for fresh game. I could be wrong and yes, I suppose I’m admitting that I’m trying “game” the system by avoiding morons.

Enough about that, eh?

I’m a short story author. I write novels, but they suck. I am totally enthralled with writing short fiction and it’s better than ten birthdays at once when a short story works. Like magic. Novels, on the other hand, are a necessary bait to convince readers to look at my real stories. Seriously. I’m not into the novel thing at all and never ending 8+Mb serials that stay on the charts for 6 years running are just mind boggling for me.

That little rant leads me to, first of all, is there any way to provide a greater separation of short and long fiction? I mean score-wise, to compare short stories to novels through a process influenced by story length, download numbers, update frequency, and plain old luck (who else is posting when I am?) is just not very right. Value short fiction within parameters the exclude long fiction, and vice versa. Compare apples to apples.

Also, incomplete/in-progress stories should benefit the author simply because they benefit the site. They’re annoying, possibly even sadistic, but they do provide content and not all authors are inherently evil. The idea of punishing an author (somehow) for not completing a story for any of a variety of reasons good and bad is fairly ludicrous. If I feel pressured, I mark the story complete. It’s that simple. It’s my story and I can end it anytime and anyhow I like and thus avoid punitive damages, although the scores and emails will probably be ugly…But that’s the function of reader feedback, not the site moderators. To communicate reader opinion. As long as SOL has members interested in downloading incomplete/in-progress content, whatever the reaction, the business is being served to some extent. Not as much as you may wish, but some.

I’d like to think that after I’m gone, whatever I haven’t finished will still remain on SOL. People won’t know why I blew a story off, they’ll be angry with me, but it’s something I wrote and it has some value even without an ending. A lot of people disagree with that, but I can’t help how I feel. I’m at a point where I need to be realistic and I’d rather leave a decent half finished story up than throw it away because I know I won’t get to see it through to the end. Anyway, I’ve already made arrangements for someone to mark everything complete in my eventual absence, so I’m just whining.

And oh! Yes, fix the download counters. It’s ridiculous to see a story of mine getting 50,000 downloads when only 4000 people are reading it. I mean, it’s nice to see downloads chapter by chapter, and that information is relevant, but the readers only see the total and it’s completely misleading. Show total downloads for the most recent chapter posted. That would seem most accurate, the way to inform your membership who’s reading what. It might even change the “Top Twenty Ongoing Serials by Download” page. Not scoring a story to the end would drastically change the never changing “Top Twenty Ongoing Serials by Score” page. Other authors might actually get some exposure there.

Blah.

Thanks for letting me air it out. I like a great many things about SOL, believe me. TPA is a reader toy, btw, I say let them keep it. If you get rid of it, that’s okay too. Nobody can agree on what the T & P are anyway. Appeal is all that counts. I mean, you’re not running a creative writing workshop here, right?

rache

Also, many reader visit the site on a weekly basis.
This mean that in order to maximize the average downloads in the new scheme, authors will tend to post no more than one chapter a week.
That would be detrimental, especially considering the current trend of stories already completely written and batch posted in a week or two. Which would then be posted in a few month instead.

I don’t care about the style of voting or how download counts are arrived at. Do what you think is best, Lazeez – you have my support. – Transdelion

I hope you will reconsider and keep the “bScore”. It’s more valuable to me personally than the actual score. It’s the average of how the readers actually rated the story — how many said “Good” vs “Very Good” (on average). For purposes of evaluating my own work, I’m not all that interested in how it compares to what scores they gave to other authors.

It’s probably too late to change this, but I think it would be good if the adjusted scores were on a completely different scale from the 1-10. If they were centered around 100 rather than 6.00, then the readers and writers would know that it doesn’t have any clear relationship and is an adjusted number. What makes the current system confusing is that 5.94 looks like it relates to most readers rating it a “6″, and it isn’t.

The very strong clustering right around the current 6.00 would also merit a number like “100″.

I’m neutral about the prize issue.

I do have one comment that the discussion raised with me – a pet peeve if you will.

I do read reviews, and I do prefer serials. I’d really like to see a distinction (or even just a note) to tell me if the reviewer read the whole story or just several parts of a serial at the time of the review.

First, a percentage should go to you or the site you deserve it!

Second, how about quarterly contest with prizes, hopefully this would make the prizes worth winning

Lastly, Remember the Golden Clitoride Awards? How about something like it with really nice awards for the winners.

As for as voting, as a reader it really does not mean much to me, except to see my favorite authors do well. I base my story selection on what type of story it is and the authors track record in producing good (and complete) stories. I rarely if ever vote on a story before it is completed, I have been burnt to many times by starting a great story only to have it go “incomplete and inactive”.

Thank you and all the authors on this site for all of your hard work.

Anyway, I’ve never used the TPA scores, but reserving them for authors and reviewers, or maybe all premier members, with the clear understanding that the scores are permanently retained seems like a useful and mostly harmless thing.

For those authors who want to keep TPA, please realize that TPA votes don’t count for folks like me who only look at the single number.

As far as the money is concerned, keep most for emergencies/upgrades and give the rest to the top three authors on a prorated basis (ie: 50% first place, 30% second place, and 20% third place) just like professional competition in other endeavors.

Keep up the excellent job.

Please leave the bScore on the author’s stats page. That’s what I look at most. It’s the only score (assuming TPA goes away) that shows me how people voted. Per the example in my previous post, I cannot relate the 6.70 to an 8.29. I need to see the 8.29 bScore to know how people scored my story. And having a summary of the number of 1s, 2s, … 10s would be great, too.

But please keep the bScore on the stats page.

The answer is simple. Comparing the 5.25 score to the TPA 8.8.8 score is apples to oranges. Why? Because the TPA score is an absolute number while the final score, in this example 5.25, is the result of putting the scores through an algorithm which results in a lower number. For example, I have TPA turned off on one of my stories so the score reflects only basic scores. The basic scores average out to be 8.29 while the score you see on the site is 6.70. So back to TPA, if all those basic scores were instead given to the “A” part of the TPA, the 8.29 would show as an 8 (system rounds down to a whole number). So you’d see an 8 for TPA and a 6.70 for the final score, yet they’re based on the same votes.

P.S. Nb. with multi-chapter story, if it is so bad that I don’t want to read it further, I have to jump to last chapter to vote low…

Reasonably good scores in progress, for a long serial, help create an audience, which can then encourage the author to continue writing/editing/posting.

I haven’t read all the comments here, I think I read about 40 of the 50 comments posted.

1) Kill TPA voting. I tried it when it first became available but never use it now and pay absolutely no attention to it. It tells me almost nothing because a few nasty voters can throw off the whole thing and then there are the people who vote the same for everything, no matter how good or bad the story is.

2) I agree with others here that you should keep the money. Put it in to the site or, use it for prize money for specific contests, don’t just throw it at authors with a good download count.

3) In a related note, I agree with something others have also said and that’s that if you start paying authors, the “feel” of the site is going to change. I’m sure people already try to game the system to get better votes, to get more downloads or just decrease the votes or downloads of a disliked author. But if you insert money in to the equation, it’s going to get downright nasty.

4) Another comment by another author that I agree with. Being able to see the vote count would be nice. Being able to see how many people gave my story a 1 and how many gave it a 5 and how many gave it a 10. I don’t need to know who voted how or anything just a simple graph telling how many.

I’ve been a reader, and an author, here for ten plus years, I fear what putting money in to the mix will do to this site. It is too easy to game the system – to up your score or be vindictive and screw with someone else download count or score. On a guess, 99% of the authors here would write even if there was no internet to post their stories on. We do it because we enjoy writing erotic stories. If an author wants to get paid for what they write, there are already ways to do that; paper publishing or E-book publishing. I never came to SOL to make money.

Argon

On SOL or any other board voting in any system more than a binary like/not is meaningless because different people will vote according to different criteria. It may be logical to say that an average story in a 1 to 10 is 5.5 before you start reading, and then that goes up or down as you find elements you like or dislike. A 1 would be a story with no interest and no redeeming features whatever. A 10 would be a perfect story.

I suspect that 8, 9, and 10 are used mostly, with some 1 and 2 used to indicate extreme displeasure, with the vast majority of readers not voting on stories they do not like, but simply hitting the [BACK] button. A histogram of the individual vote values frequencies would be very interesting.

All that said – SOL is your site and you do whatever you want. If I don’t like what you do I am not compelled to post or read any stories on here. Actually I don’t care in the least about voting and would not complain if it all vanished. Writing is competitive, but cannot be marked like mathematics exams.

Similar to how I enjoy the overall package of SOL, I much appreciate the idea of Lazeez to offer some of the earned money back. Yet, as others wrote above, I would not go there. The moment you attach money to any appreciation system, it will warp authors and the system. For example, it will be seductive for authors to write such that early quitters still vote higher – rather than to write as they prefer. A good series can very well build up slow and then only the persistent readers will rate positive. I can see why turning off voting for a series is actually a good way of managing it rather than to implictly tag them as cheaters.

As long as voting has no extra effects or benefits, it will stay harmless; add money to it and it will lead its own life, where eventually the tail will wag the dog rather than the reverse. One of the responses above suggested a panel; as long as readers are willing to step up to that, this sounds like the best option since panels are less likely to be played – at the cost of readers putting in extra time.

But I would suggest to keep the money for potential future lean years and an occasional extra contest, or rewarding exceptionally outstanding authors.

Whatever you decide, I will keep enjoying this place.

Few clarifications are in order:

Contests will not be going away. I’m preparing one as we speak.

The monthly thing will be on top of normal contests and will require nothing special from the authors. It’s easy to opt out, all you have to do is refuse when contacted. The story will still be listed as a winner and the author doesn’t have to give up their anonymity .

We’ll do a test run for the award and see what kind of effect it will have on the site. If we run out of money or we find mostly negative effects (although, I’m now sure what the metrics are to decide on negative or positive; I would appreciate hearing more about the ‘literotica in the middle of a train wreck thing).

The idea of limiting author awards to certain period of premier time per volume instead of unlimited time after a threshold is interesting. It may give more authors the incentive to write instead of resting on the laurels; as there are few that stopped writing completely just after achieving premier status, leaving many stories incomplete and inactive (which is my original reason for the exclusion of inactive stories from eligibility).

As for the TPA, well, I understand the sentiments here. After all I created the TPA at the request of authors. I know that authors use it fairly well, but it hard to justify keeping it around for the 50 people who use it well out of the thousands upon thousands that frequent the site.

However, I may keep it for authors only, that way the data and the upkeep would be much less.

When I make the change, current votes will be migrated to the basic voting system. I’m developing a strategy that would allow me to keep votes from a certain point on to allow me to enhance the voting system to eliminate outlier votes more reliably the same way as Finestories. Which means that readers may be able to change their vote if they want.

(I’m intrigued by the like/don’t like idea for chapters. However, it’s not easy to do if I want to disallow multiple ‘likes’ by the same person.)

The weighing formula will still be there as it’s proven that it’s very effective for my purposes in controlling vote/score inflation.

On that note, for anybody that thinks that the formula only applies to post 2006 stories, you’re wrong. The system affects pre-2006 stories more than recent ones. Stories posted in 2005 are processed with a median of 9 compared to a median of 7.9 for stories posted after the change in 2006. Which means that stories from 2005 with a bScore of 9, get a weighed score of 6. Stories from 2010-2012 are weighed at a median of 7.94 which means a bScore of 7.94 get a score of 6. An old story has to have a bScore of over 9.6 to get over 8 in score.

The fact that there are still stories that have hard to beat scores from pre-2006 only shows how ridiculously compressed up top the old scores were and really highlight the need for the current formula.

As for turning off scoring, I think I’ve made up my mind to keep the ability to turn it off, but modify it to make it permanent; either off or on, period; no changing allowed. And I have to remove the display of the bScore. Authors who have been around from before 2006 know what it is, but I’m tired of answering the same question (what is the bScore?) over, and over, and over from new authors.

Download counts: The system will divide by the number of instalments that the author makes, not the number of chapters. So if an author posts a complete story of 20 chapter in one shot, that will count as one instalment. If an author posts a 100 chapter story in 5 chapter batches, that counts as 20 instalments. You know, it counts actual number of postings, not how many parts each time.

It’s done that way because each instalment sends the story to the top of the updates list once, and makes those who are reading it access it again. So if 3000 people are reading a story, then currently, with each instalment the story gets another 3000 downloads.

However, the new system will severely punish those who make multiple chapter postings daily. There are authors who post chapters every few hours. The effect on downloads/reads is the same as though they posted once, but the effect on the new counting is that each chapter will be considered an instalment on its own; shrinking the display download count.

The weekly download count will be divided by how many instalments the author made in the last 7 days.

So the new method of counting will more closely show how many people are following a serial regardless of how many postings the author makes and will make it fair again for those who post less frequently or in one shot. Of course, it won’t diminish the effect of the story being on the updates page more often and in front of more readers for a longer time.

This system will encourage more stories and more authors. Plus it will encourage authors to continue supplying stories, so in effect you will be “paying” them.

As for scoring, its always been a contentious system. As long as soreheads can drop unreasonably low scores on an author’s work for whatever reason, the system will stay broken. A quick eyeball review of a list of scores will show these sorehead votes, and what a punishing effect they have.

So continue on, do as you’ve been doing, and we’ll write and post as we feel the urge … or not.

=GB=

I like the TPA system, and would vote to keep it if at all possible, How about combining the two systems with the basic score counting and the TPA as an optional addition?

I’ve never seen the point of voting on a multi-part story before it’s completed, but that’s just me. There have been several stories that have “grown on me” and any vote I made at the beginning would have been far less than I felt the story deserved had I in fact voted then.

Cheers.

I agree with the posters that say “Keep the money.” You’ve earned it through hard work and dedication, and you deserve the reward.

You can count me in with those who are highly displeased with the TPA system as it stands now. The thing that irritates me the most is that there is no way current stories can compete with the pre-2007 stories that don’t get downgraded by the scoring process, whatever it is. In my own opinion, it has a lot to do with why the stories being posted today don’t measure up to many pre-2007 stories: even the best authors know they can’t win. Even changing the system so new stories compete on an “apples to apples” basis with the pre-2007 stories would be a huge improvement.

Have I turned off scoring to “game the system?” Of course! It’s the only defense I have against the “one-bombers” who drop extremely low scores on the first chapter of my stories because they aren’t stroke stories, and never look at the story again. Leaving the scoring off till the story is close to an end at least assures me that most people scoring the story have more or less completed it. I would hate to lose that option. However, if it comes to that, I’d be willing to try leaving scoring on so long as my stories can compete with the pre-2007 stories on an “apples to apples” basis. If that means losing TPA, so be it. The multiple response categories of TPA are useful, but the unfair advantage it gives the pre-2007 stories ruins it right from the start.

Given a choice, I’d like to see ALL scoring turned off till a story is complete — right across the board, be it a story with one chapter or one thousand. Among other things, it might encourage writers to complete stories. I know many, if not most people posting to SOL are write and post authors, and all too often they write themselves into a corner and can’t get out of it. There are many good reasons why an author may not finish a story, but there should be at least some positive incentive to finish it. I would suggest considerably shortening the interval a story can be active before being changed to an inactive status.

Another suggestion would be to limit the ability to score to premiere members. This might provide some incentive to encourage people to become premiere members — perhaps not much, but at least some. That way you’d have people scoring stories that have at least some practical interest in the stories and the site.

SOL is good. It can be better. It cannot remain static; you must always be working toward improvements. Thank you for the vast effort you have put into the site.

You may or may not agree with me on this, but Literotica is in the middle of a ‘train wreck’…

Through the efforts of Lazeez, Stories Online has worked it’s way to the top of the heap when it comes to erotic stories on the web. There are other sites out there, but by far, this is the Cadillac of ‘free’ sites where readers can come to read stories from just about any genre legally permitted in today’s society.

The site navigation and story search links are top of the line, bar none! The ease of posting, the quick and timely information provided readers AND writers is by FAR, the best.

Correct the voting descrepancies, making the system fair and equal to all stories regardless of author, then step back and take a long hard look at the other changes…

Be careful of too many changes you make, to make it better…..

J Ryter

I don’t know the gross stats for the site, but know from experience with ongoing corporation and public site support that the running costs in a per -user, per- Terabyte (traffic/Storage) and per -Gigabyte of RAM are economical. Besides having a server that NEVER wakes you up in the middle of the night with a crash is worth more than almost anything except being on permanent vacation at Magic Sands beach in Kona, HI

Where you see turning off scoring or changing it to TPA only as ‘gaming’ the system, authors see it as trying to insure we get a fair vote by making sure the reader has read at least a majority of the story before casting a vote.

Forcing TPA only is the closest I can come to being as fair as possible. Readers who choose to score the story as they will after a chapter or two and stop reading have that choice. Readers who continue with the story have the option of changing their votes later on based on the entire story and not just a small portion of it. I have had stories go both ways score wise when it was completed, (by obvious updating of TPA scores based on lower numbers showing up as recent votes). I was completely surprised at the number of people who update their votes, especially after the final installment.

I honestly don’t have much of an opinion on TPA otherwise except STUDY IT CAREFULLY. You are showing all the signs here of creating yet another scoring ‘generation’ like the last one. I know with my scores the average appeal score consistently outperforms the average bScore. Simply dumping TPA without considering the algorithm used to lower the scores will create a third block of scoring results similar to the pre/post Dec 2006 rift we have now. You’ll be applying the same algorithm to even lower average scores, at least for a time.

If you are going back to basic only scoring, give the readers the ability to update it as a serial progresses instead of a one shot vote on the parts they have read so far.

Ezzy