Forum: Bug Report and Feature Requests

I've noticed there are some codes whose stories are almost always rated lower than the quality of writing would suggest, indicating to me that there are readers who may not be actually reading, just downvoting based on code. This may or may not be true, but I wonder if this might work:

Put a timer on the rating, so the page has to be open at least some amount of time (like two minutes or so). Someone who actually reads it won't notice, since it takes time to read a chapter or story. The ability to rate would be greyed out until the timer elapses.

Or, allow rating with a hidden timer. If the timer hasn't elapsed, the vote only counts 1/4 of a regular vote.

I can see one major problem with that suggestion.
I frequently download and subsequently read when offline, and possibly go back solely to vote on the story. Since I have already made my decision on a score, the page would only be open for a few seconds while I enter that.
I assume the system records that I have previously visited that particular story for a reasonable time, but it may still require some adjustment to pick that fact up days or sometimes weeks later when I finally complete reading it.
It may be more realistic to identify those who give a 1 (or a 10) to the majority of stories and just discount their vote as trolling.
I think the present system of discounting the high and low percentage probably removes a lot of that bias though.
There may also be lower scores solely because that subject doesn't give as good a feeling to the reader and they react accordingly. Using codes can help select what you want to read, but I would also read some authors regardless of codes since I tend to like their style. M/M does nothing for me at all, but it is an integral - albeit minor - part of Lazlo's Carter Clan stories and didn't result in my viewing the story as of lesser score value, whereas it may with other readers.

Perhaps the authors prefer a restriction that limits ones and other low numbers but accepts tens and other high numbers.

One item to consider, before going to extreme coding measures is that all story scores are adjusted so the mean (aka "average") score is a six, and other stories that score higher or lower than that story are distributed so the scores do not change the order in which they are presented.

Scores close to the mean wind up closer to 6 than the raw score and so that to get a ten, or a one, all votes would need to be that value. To get a 9 point something almost all scores need to be a ten (leaving out the outlier scores that are ignored).

The closer to the mean (6) the raw score is, the closer the final score is. Stories whose raw score is in the 7 or 8 range gets scores closer to 6. Ones in the 3 or 4 raw score also get adjusted closer to six.

I don't know if the distribution approaches a bell curve, so that if the standard deviation were one, two thirds of all scores would be between 5 and 7, and the one sixth of all scores over 7 would be closer to 7 than 8. Only the scores with the very highest raw scores would be in the eights or nines. Or the lowest raw scores be between three and four.

Banning ones may adjust a raw score, but the adjusted score will still be low if that is how the readers scored the story, with 2, 3, 4, 5s and maybe a few higher scores that didn't get discarded in the outlying 10%, I doubt it makes much difference to an author if the story scores 2.5 (raw score) or 4.7 adjusted score. It seems to irk some authors that their raw score 8. something gets reported in the sixes or sevens. It just means other stories got higher raw scores, and the adjustment to keep the stories in raw score order (but to avoid almost all the stories having scores over 8, to confuse the reading public) changed the reported score.

Scores are for readers, not authors. Authors should look at downloads, or perhaps how scores change between chapters to see how votes get adjusted depending on what was in the chapter. Management is using a procedure worked out over time, with many inputs from various interest groups. Lazeez may be willing to fine tune something that really bothers you and doesn't affect too many other interests, but he only has 24 hours a day, except when daylight savings changes the number of hours in a day. Sometimes to 23 and sometimes to 25. There may be other things he needs or wants to do. Perhaps even read a story or two. I am pretty sure running this site has stolen time he might have used to write stories.