Lajeez calls voting "The Great Mistake" because of how divisive the concept was.
He used to allow authors agency to choose to enable or disable voting at any time. My preference was turn it on around the 7th chapter.
My theory was that if you read that far into the story you should have enough to base a preliminary vote on. One chapter is never enough and trolls are likely not to keep coming back and checking to see if you turned on voting so they can be be an edgelord/get their kicks downvoting.
In a previous blog, I asked if it would be worth it to turn off voting just to take that thrill away from them. By default now, it's always on and you can't turn it off yourself. I thought Lajeez could disable it for all of my stories if I requested it (that's not the case).
Most thoughtful readers who vote are going to read story codes, descriptions, and consider whether or not to invest their time in reading my story. I am fully okay with getting a low score if I deserved it from a reader.
I do not see the problem with that at all. I try to fix missing story codes or errors. It's like software - you can't catch all the bugs on release.
What I am specifically addressing her are the twit brigade of toxic edgelords who create multiple accounts specifically to harass and downvote authors that write story content that they do not enjoy. These are typically manbaby children that drive off authors and readers.
They have weaponized their votes to be able to harass authors and discourage them. They are like flies at a picnic - impossible to get rid of because if you swat one, two more show up. They provide no value.
I'd imagine that their lives are so pathetic, the only form of control/authority they have is the ability to down vote a story. I just wanted to explore if it was worth giving up voting entirely to deny them that tiny little bit of control.
One observation was the reader doesn't even bother with stories under a 7.0. That's unfortunate.
Someone else wrote "The best stories on this site are in the margins" and cited their favorite story was around a 7.0.
Another person pointed out only a tiny fraction of users bother to vote. Typically people who would probably tend to vote on one end of high or low because they had a strong opinion to even bother.
My conclusion: Scores really don't matter. You are seldom going to get an accurate picture of most stories quality from the voting. It's a subjective popularity contest.
Obviously, a beloved story with hundreds of votes in the 9+ range is very likely popular WITH THE PEOPLE WHO LIKE THAT GENRE, but for the most part - there is a vast sea of 5-7 score stories that are there for any number of myriad reasons and there is no way to reliably know how good they are from those scores. You could take 100 stories with precisely the same scores and number of votes and they'll vary widely in quality because it's subjective.
The key to me is reading the description - not the score. If that hooks me, and I give it a chapter or two then I'll know if I want to read it.
The number of readers is also a good indicator but not entirely reliable. My first chapters always have higher readership because of how offline downloaders pull stories off the site. It does not mean the later chapters are worse.
Vulgus is a great example as well. He writes some GREAT shit. I've seen him post a completed 15+ chapter story in the "new stories" that gets few reads because people do not know about it.
It's an indicator, but not a fool-proof one. I'd trust the number of reads over votes though.
Mike McGifford is another fantastic example. His writing is 10X better than mine. Whether I deserve it or not, I have over 800 followers on here.
His writing is objectively better. His stories are incredibly well thought out. Yet, number of readers, total votes and scores may not tell that story.
Btw - if you are looking for a story like the ones I write (but better) try this completed epic.
https://storiesonline.net/s/30137:272451/chapter-10-philip-s-mom
Back to voting;
Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you want to look at it, Lajeez informed me that the site no longer has the option to remove voting in any form or fashion.
My take away is to just let the trolls have a useless voting drop down button to play with.
They will never get to play with a real woman's clit, so they may as well get to mash that voting button to take out their edgelord rage against people who dare write a story with content/characters they do not enjoy.