Total/average votes

[botticelliangel]

I know you guys are busy reworking the site, and it just occurred to me that one of the things I think would be cool is if we could go in and see the actual votes for stories, not just the average. I think that some people might be voting in place of reviewing, and that it might be a good guide for the author. Right now it just shows the average, and generally everyone is full stars which doesn't tell us much of anything except (x) amount of people voted.

Just a thought...

[Aysha c.c.]

I was just thinking the same thing. In fact I actually came to this thread to make this same suggestion. It would be great if it were possible to see who was voting and how they rated the story. It would also keep people from voting for their own stories.

Just a thought.

[DemonGoddess]

it does show it.

you see the '++++' or however many the story has, then / and a number. That number is the number of votes

[Aysha c.c.]

It only shows an average not the individual votes so, and that is what we want to see.

Sam voted: +++++

Hecter voted: +++

Jane voted: ++++

and so on. It would be nice to be able to get a true scense of what the people who vote are thinking.

Maybe you can make it so that on the Arcive page it gives the average as it does now, but if you click on it, it gives you a list of thoese who voted an what they voted. But maybe you should also give the option to vote anonymously so on the list it says

Anonymous voted: ++

this woud be cool becouse some people might fear retribution for being honest.

[DemonGoddess]

The voting is a truly anonymous function. It does not track who voted how, individually. It simply records the number of votes, and averages the rating

[Aysha c.c.]

I'm only suggesting you consider a change; I thought it might make things better for the authors.

Edited November 26, 2012 by Aysha c.c.

[BronxWench]

If I'm recalling correctly, the entire ratings system that we have now is going to be eliminated in the code rewrite once it gets to that stage. I believe it will be replaced with a recommendation option, to allow readers to recommend a fiction that they like.

One of the ongoing issues we've had with the current system is that it is easy to abuse it. Authors have had stories rated down because readers objected to a pairing or to a story line, even if the story was well written, while another fiction that has a favored pairing is highly rated despite not being so much as spellchecked.

It isn't a reliable indicator of a story's worth to me as a reader, and as an author, it tells me even less. I'd rather know that readers would recommend my story. I might get fewer of those, but it would mean so much more.

[ChrisCross]

I'd like there to be a way I can track the individual votes on my stories, but I don't need to know who voted. I was thinking it would be a click function like Aysha said, but without any names, like the formats on the polling feature:

x many people voted ++

y many people voted +++

And so on. That way it would stay anonymous, like it is now, but give me an idea if my 3 average is a lot of folks going 'meh', or just two crank votes bringing down an otherwise high average.

Also, if there would be a way to add a hit count tracker on my control panel, to see if the rate of new hit is going up, down or is steady, that would be great.

[Kurahieiritr]

I have no idea whether or not my vote rating is being dropped or not. Then again, I have yet to figure out the whole voting system so tend to ignore it personally. I don't really think about such items when I post my stories. Personally I have never seen a rating system that was fool poof, or completely reliable either. Fanpoodlers tend to overrate their pal's work to please the whiners, and the best writers can get ignored outright with such rating systems.

I like Bronx's idea about the referral style listing because if someone reads my work, I know they will tend to also tell their friends about my story. Word of mouth has always improved my following, so I like the idea of being able to get such a promotion by my readers. I know a couple dozen people who have sent their friends to my stories because I get told in PM's at FFnet that they refer my work to their pals.

Then again, some people won't be as quick to put up a personal referral for really controversial material. Too bad there isn't an anonymous setting where the referral for a story can be under ones pen name, or under an anonymous tag at the start of a category so to say. Then, if a story gets a lot of referrals, a check mark of some sort could be added beside the title to indicate that the story is liked a lot. If it is a very dark and controversial topic, people will not feel exposed in giving it a referral in such cases.

[RogueMudblood]

Then again, some people won't be as quick to put up a personal referral for really controversial material. Too bad there isn't an anonymous setting where the referral for a story can be under ones pen name, or under an anonymous tag at the start of a category so to say. Then, if a story gets a lot of referrals, a check mark of some sort could be added beside the title to indicate that the story is liked a lot. If it is a very dark and controversial topic, people will not feel exposed in giving it a referral in such cases.

And therein it is no different than the rating system. It would still be abused - referring more on friends' stories thereby causing other stories to get ignored. We've even had cases of authors on site creating separate profiles in order to rec their own works, boosting their review counts leaving accolades, bumping rates, etc.

You are correct that there is no perfect system. I do like the idea of knowing how many times a story has been recommended. I also like knowing the identity of those who recommended it - not because it outs their interests (because if I'm looking, I'm interested too, right?), but because I know I share interests in writing style and composition with some users that I don't share with others, even if we read in the same sections.

I also know that if something's tagged BDSM and it's recommended by pittwitch, then it's got material in it that's reliable - because I know she knows her BDSM. Same with Bronx. But if it's recommended by someone whose BDSM stories have made me cringe and run for the hills due to their inaccuracies, then I know I'm probably not going to like it.